XX 


*-•■* 


XX 


BEHIND 
THE  ARMY 


1':-i':H'<Kiy*?.-i:-: 


BY 

E.  ALEXANDER 

POWELL 


W*r.ofCafffornja 


BY  E.  ALEXANDER  POWELL 

THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 
THE  LAST  FRONTIER 
GENTLEMEN  ROVERS 
THE  END  OF  THE  TRAIL 
FIGHTING  IN  FLANDERS 
THE  ROAD  TO  GLORY 

VIVE  LA  France! 

ITALY  AT  WAR 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


THE  ARMY 
BEHIND  THE  ARMY 


THE  ARMY 
BEHIND  THE  ARMY 


BY 

MAJOR  E.  ALEXANDER  POWELL 
U.  S.  A. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1919 


Copyright,  191!),  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  September,  1919 


SIO.I 


TO 

FIVE    FRIENDS    OF    THE    A.    E.    F. 

LIEUT.-COL.  N.  J.  WILEY 

MAJOR  HUGH   B.  ROWLAND 

MAJOR    HAMILTON    FISH,  JR. 

LIEUT.  WILFORD   S,   CONROW 

LIEUT.  KINGDON    GOULD 

IN  MEMORY  OF  THE  DAYS  WE  SPENT  TOGETHER 
ON  THE   BANKS   OF  THE   M.ARNE 


2227060 


AN  ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

For  the  interest  they  have  shown  and  the  assis- 
tance they  have  given  me  in  the  preparation  of  this 
book,  I  am  indebted  to  many  persons.  Each  chapter 
was  written  with  the  co-operation  of  the  chief  and 
subchiefs  of  the  branch  of  the  army  with  which  it 
deals,  and  upon  its  completion  it  was  by  them  care- 
fully read  and  revised.  The  statements  and  figures 
are  as  nearly  accurate,  therefore,  as  extreme  care  can 
make  them.  The  Honorable  Newton  D.  Baker,  Secre- 
tary of  War,  authorized  the  writing  of  the  book  and 
issued  orders  that  every  facility  was  to  be  afforded 
me  for  obtaining  the  necessary  material,  and  the 
Honorable  Benedict  Crowell,  Assistant  Secretary  of 
War,  who  from  the  beginning  took  a  Hvely  personal 
interest  in  the  work,  placed  at  my  disposal  the  great 
mass  of  material  which  he  had  collected  for  his  Official 
Report.  To  Major-General  William  S.  Seibert,  Director 
of  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service,  to  Colonel  William 
S.  Walker,  in  command  of  Edgewood  Arsenal,  and  to 
Colonel  Bradley  Dewey,  in  command  of  the  Gas  De- 
fense Division,  I  am  particularly  indebted,  as  it  was 
due  to  their  efforts  that  I  was  able  to  undertake  the 
writing  of  the  book.  Major-General  William  M.  Black, 
Chief  of  Engineers,  Lieutenant-Colonel  Chenoweth, 
and  Major  Evarts  Tracy  of  the  Corps  of  Engineers; 
Major-General  C.  T.  Menoher,  Director  of  Military 


viii  AN   ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Aeronautics,  Colonel  S.  M.  Davis,  Lieutenant-Colonel 
H.  B.  Hersey,  and  Major  H.  M.  Hickam  of  the  Air 
Service;  Colonel  James  L.  Walsh,  to  whose  generosity 
I  am  indebted  for  much  of  the  material  relating  to 
Army  Ordnance,  Colonel  E,  M.  Shinkle  and  Major 
A.   B.    Quinton,   Jr.,   of  the   Ordnance   Department; 
Major-General  George  S.  Squier,  Chief  Signal  Officer 
of  the  Army,  Brigadier-General  C.  McK.  Saltzman 
and  Lieutenant-Colonel  Joseph  0.  Mauborgne  of  the 
Signal  Corps;  Major-General  M.  W.  Ireland,  Surgeon- 
General,  and  Colonel  M.  A.  De  Laney  of  the  Medical 
Corps;   Brigadier- General  Marlborough  Churchill,  Di- 
rector of  MiHtary  Litelligence,  Captain  R.  G.  Martin, 
Captain  A.  R.  Townsend,  Captain  H.  M.  Dargan, 
and  Captain  J.  Stanley  Moore,  of  the  Military  In- 
telligence Division;    Major-General  Rogers,  Quarter- 
master-General of  the  Army;    Colonel  I.  C.  Welborn, 
Director  of  the  Tank  Corps;  Brigadier- General  Drake, 
Director  of  the  Motor  Transport  Corps;   Cap  tarn  W. 
K.  WTieatley,  Chief  of  the  Historical  Section  of  the 
Motor  Transport  Corps,  and  W.   L.   Pollard,  Esq., 
Chief  of  the  Historical  Branch  of  Purchase  and  Storage, 
all  showed  me  exceptional  courtesy  and  afforded  me 
every  possible  assistance.    I  welcome  this  opportunity 
to  express  to  them  my  appreciation.    To  the  Bulletin 
of  the  Sprtice  Production  Division,  pubhshed  by  the 
Loyal  Legion  of  Loggers  and  Lumbermen,  I  am  in- 
debted for  a  considerable  portion  of  the  account  of 
spruce  production  in  the  Pacific  Northwest. 

E.  Alexander  Powell. 


CONTENTS 


FACE 


The  Ears  of  the  Army i 

"ESSAYONS" 47 

The  Gas-Makers loi 

The  ''Q.  M.  C." 140 

Ordnance 197 

Fighters  of  the  Sky 259 

"M.  1." 328 

"Treat  'em  Rough"      409 

"Get  There!" 424 

Menders  of  Men 437 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  Burning  of  an  Observation  Balloon  at  Fort  Sill,  Okla- 
homa       Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

Laying  a  Field  Telegraph  Line S 

Signal- Corps  Men  Erecting  a  Field  Telephone      ....  8 

Signal- Corps  Men  at  Work  Repairing  the  Tangle  of  Copper 
Wires  Which  Link  the  Infantry  in  the  Front-Line  Trenches 

with  the  Guns 9 

Communication  by  Use  of  Panels      .      .• 14 

A  Member  of  the  Signal  Corps  Sending  Messages  by  Means 

of  a  Lamp 15 

Motion-Picture  Operators  of  the  Photographic  Section  of  the 

Signal  Corps  Going  into  Action  on  a  Tank     ....  34 

An  Officer  of  the  Signal  Corps  Operating  a  Telephone  at  the 

Front 35 

New  Type  of  Search-Light  Used  in  the  American  Army    .      .  80 

Camouflaging  a  Divisional  Headquarters  in  the  Toul  Sector  81 

Suits  Known  as  Cagoules 94 

The  Work  of  the  Camouflage  Corps 95 

Man  and  Horse  Completely  Protected  Against  Poisonous  Gas  132 

Types  of  Gas  Masks  Used  by  American  and  European  Armies  133 

1,500  Tons  of  Peach-Pits  Used  for  the  Manufacture  of  Char- 
coal for  Use  in  Gas  Masks 134 

Testing  Respirators  Outside  the  Gas  Chamber       ■      •      •      •  135 

Testing  Gas  Masks  Inside  the  Gas  Chamber 135 

Advancing  Under  Gas 138 

zi 


xii  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING  PACE 


Training  for  Gas  Warfare 139 

Cutting    Their   Way   through   Barbed-Wire   Entanglements 

while  Training  with  Gas  Masks 139 

American  Salvage  Dump  in  France 192 

A  Workroom  in  an  American  Salvage  Depot  in  France     .      .  192 

An  American  Delousing  Station 193 

An  American  Laundry  in  Operation  Near  the  Front    .      .      .  193 

A  16-Inch  Howitzer 202 

A  16-Inch  Howitzer  on  a  Railway  Mount 203 

A  Scene  in  an  American  Arsenal 214 

Filling  a  Powder-Bag  for  a  16-Inch  Gun 215 

An  American  75-mm.  in  Action 232 

The  37-mm.  Gun  in  Action 233 

An  American  75-mm.  Field  Gun,  Tractor  Mounted     .           .  234 

A  12-Inch  Railway  Gun  in  Operation 235 

A  1 2-Inch  Seacoast  Mortar  on  a  Railway  Mount   ....  236 

6-Inch  Seacoast  Rifles  Taken  from  Coast  Fortifications  and 

Mounted  for  Field  Use  in  France 237 

John  M.  Browning,  the  Inventor  of  the  Pistol,  Rifle,  and 

Machine  Gun  Which  Bears  His  Name 242 

The  Browning  Heavy  Machine  Gun 242 

A  Rifle  Grenadier , 243 

Bombing  Practice 288 

Eggs  of  Death 288 

Pigeons  Have  Been  Repeatedly  Used  with  Success  from  Both 

Airplanes  and  Balloons 289 

The  Eye  in  the  Sky;  an  Airplane  Camera  in  Operation     .     .  289 

Radio  Telephone  Apparatus  in  Operation  on  an  Airplane     .  300 

President  Wilson  Talking  with  an  Aviator  in  the  Clouds  by 

Means  of  the  Radio  Telephone 300 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xiii 

FACING  PACE 

A  Range-Finder  for  Ascertaining  the  Altitude  and  Speed  of 

Airplanes 301 

A  Sentinel  of  the  Skies 306 

An  American  Observation  Balloon  Leaving  Its  "Bed"  Be- 
hind the  Western  Front 307 

A  Balloon   Company   Manoeuvring  a   Caquot   from   Winch 

Position  to  Its  Bed 3^7 

An  American  Kite  Balloon  About  to  Ascend 310 

Planes  in  Battle  Formation 311 

A  Basket  Parachute  Drop 316 

Balloonist  INIaking  a  Parachute  Jump  from  an  Altitude  of 

7,900  Feet 316 

Training  the  Student  Aviator 317 

The  American  Whippet  Tank 418 

The  Mark  V  Tank 418 

A  Squadron  of  Whippet  Tanks  Advancing  in  Battle  Forma- 
tion    419 

A  Squadron  of  Whippet  Tanks  Parked  and  Camouflaged  to 

Conceal  Them  from  Enemy  Observation 41  g 

Mobile  Machine-Shop  Operating  in  a  Village  Under  Shell  Fire  434 

Supply  of  Motor  Tires 434 

A  Motor-Car  Wrecked  Returning  from  the  Front  Lines    .  435 

Field-Hospital 454 

An  Infectious  Ward 454 

Clear,  Filtered,  Disinfected  Water 455 

Water  Station  on  the  Western  Front 455 


THE  ARMY 
BEHIND  THE  ARMY 


li 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY 

BEFORE  the  war  made  most  Americans  as  con- 
versant with  the  functions  of  the  various  branches 
of  the  army  as  they  are  with  the  duties  of  the  gardener 
and  the  cook,  the  work  of  the  Signal  Corps  troops  was 
popularly  supposed  to  consist,  in  the  main,  of  standing 
in  full  view  of  the  enemy  and  frantically  waving  Ht- 
tle  red-and-white  flags.  Don't  you  remember  those 
gaudily  colored  recruiting  posters  which  depicted  a 
slender  youth  in  khaki  standing  on  a  parapet,  a  signal- 
flag  in  either  outstretched  hand,  in  superb  defiance 
of  the  sheUs  which  were  bursting  all  about  him  ?  This 
popular  and  picturesque  conception  was  still  further 
fostered  at  the  officers'  training-camps,  where  the 
harassed  candidates  spent  many  unhappy  hours  at- 
tempting to  master  the  technic  of  semaphore  and  wig- 
wag. Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  during  more  than  four 
years  of  war  I  do  not  recall  ever  having  seen  a  soldier 
of  any  nation  attempt  to  signal  by  means  of  flags, 
save,  perhaps,  in  the  back  areas.  Had  such  an  attempt 
been  made  under  battle  conditions  the  signaler  prob- 
ably would  have  provided,  in  the  words  of  the  poet, 
"more  work  for  the  undertaker,  another  little  job  for 
the  casket-maker." 

By  this  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  changed 
conditions  brought  about  by   the   Great   War  made 


2  THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

the  army  signaler  a  good  life-insurance  risk.  Far  from 
it !  But  they  did  have  the  effect  of  making  him  a  trifle 
less  dashing  and  picturesque.  Instead  of  recklessly 
exposing  himself  on  the  parapet  of  a  trench  in  order 
to  dash-dot  a  message  which  the  enemy  could  have 
read  with  the  greatest  ease,  he  dragged  himself,  foot 
by  foot,  across  the  steel-swept  terrain,  a  mud-caked 
and  disreputable  figure,  on  his  task  of  repairing  the 
tangle  of  copper  strands  which  linked  the  infantry- 
men in  the  front-line  trenches  with  the  eager  guns; 
crouching  in  the  meagre  shelter  afforded  by  a  shell- 
hole,  with  receivers  strapped  to  his  ears,  he  sent  his 
radio  messages  into  space;  carrying  on  his  back  a 
wicker  hamper  filled  with  pigeons,  he  went  forward 
with  the  second  wave  of  an  attack;  or,  by  means  of  a 
military  edition  of  the  dictaphone  device  so  familiar 
to  readers  of  detective  stories,  he  eavesdropped  on 
the  enemy's  strictly  private  conversations.  Even 
though  he  had  no  opportunity  to  wave  his  little  flags, 
the  Signal  Corps  man  never  lacked  for  action  and  ex- 
citement. 

If  the  Air  Service  is,  as  it  has  frequently  been 
termed,  "the  eyes  of  the  army,"  then  the  Signal  Corps 
constitutes  the  army's  entire  nerve-system.  Under 
the  conditions  imposed  by  modern  warfare,  an  army 
without  aviators  would  be  at  least  partially  blind,  but 
without  signalers  it  would  be  bereft  of  touch,  speech, 
and  hearing.  It  is  the  business  of  the  Signal  Corps  to 
operate  and  maintain  all  the  various  systems  of  mes- 
sage transmission  —  telegraphs,  telephones,  radios, 
buzzers,  Fullerphones,  flags,  lamps,  panels,  heliographs, 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY  5 

pyrotechnics,  despatch-riders,  pigeons,  even  dogs — 
which  enable  the  Commander-in-Chief  to  keep  in  con- 
stant communication  with  the  various  units  of  his 
army  and  which  permit  of  those  units  keeping  in  touch 
with  each  other.  It  was  imperative  that  General 
Pershing  should  be  able  to  pick  up  his  telephone-receiver 
in  his  private  car,  sidetracked  hundreds  of  miles  away 
from  the  battle-front,  perhaps,  and  talk,  if  he  so  de- 
sired, with  a  subaltern  of  infantry  crouching  in  his 
dugout  on  the  edge  of  No  Man's  Land.  The  Secretary 
of  War,  seated  at  his  desk  in  Washington,  must  be 
enabled  to  talk  to  the  commander  of  a  camp  on  the 
Rio  Grande  or  of  a  cantonment  in  the  Far  Northwest. 
Though  every  strand  of  wire  leading  to  the  advanced 
positions  was  cut  by  the  periodic  shell-storms,  means 
had  to  be  provided  for  the  commanders  of  the  troops 
holding  those  positions  to  call  for  artillery  support, 
for  reinforcements,  for  ammunition,  or  for  food.  It 
was  essential  to  the  proper  working  of  the  great  war- 
machine  that  the  chiefs  of  the  Services  of  Supply  at 
Tours  should  be  in  constant  telegraphic  and  telephonic 
communication  with  the  officers  in  charge  of  the  un- 
loading of  troops  and  supplies  at  Bordeaux  and  Mar- 
seilles, at  Brest  and  St.  Nazaire.  It  was  vital  that 
the  Chief  of  Staff  should  be  kept  constantly  informed 
of  conditions  at  the  various  ports  of  embarkation. 
All  this  was  made  possible  by  the  Signal  Corps.  But 
it  was  also  necessary  that  these  various  conversations 
should  be  so  safeguarded  that  there  was  no  possibility 
of  them  being  overheard  by  enemy  spies.  And  the 
Signal  Corps  saw  to  that  too. 


4         THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

WTien  Count  von  Bernstorff  was  handed  his  pass- 
ports in  the  spring  of  191 7,  the  Signal  Corps  consisted 
of  barely  50  officers  and  about  2,500  men.  When, 
nineteen  months  later,  the  German  delegates,  stand- 
ing about  a  table  in  Marshal  Foch's  private  car,  sullenly 
affixed  their  signatures  to  the  Armistice,  the  corps 
had  grown  to  nearly  2,800  officers  and  upward  of  53,000 
men.  It  comprised  at  the  close  of  the  war  seventy- 
one  field  signal  battalions,  thirty-four  telegraph  bat- 
tahons,  twenty  replacement  and  training  battalions, 
and  fifty-two  service  companies,  together  with  several 
pigeon  and  army  radio  companies,  a  photographic  sec- 
tion, and  a  meteorological  section. 

Not  many  people  are  aware,  I  imagine,  that  nearly 
a  third  of  the  officers  and  men  who  wore  on  their  collars 
the  little  crossed  flags  of  the  Signal  Corps  were  recruited 
from  the  employees  of  the  two  great  rival  telephone 
systems  of  the  United  States — the  Bell  and  the  In- 
dependent. The  former  raised  and  sent  to  France 
twelve  complete  telegraph  battalions;  the  latter  ten 
field  signal  battalions — to  say  nothing  of  the  great 
number  of  experts,  specialists,  and  telephone-girls  who 
left  the  employ  of  those  systems  to  embark  on  the 
Great  Adventure.  So  you  need  not  be  surprised  if, 
the  next  time  your  telephone  gets  out  of  order,  your 
trouble  call  is  answered  by  a  bronzed  and  wiry  youth 
who  wears  in  the  buttonhole  of  his  rather  shabby  coat 
the  tricolored  ribbon  of  the  D.  S.  C. — won,  perhaps, 
while  keeping  the  communications  open  at  Chateau- 
Thierry.  And  the  operator  who  says,  "Number, 
please,"  so  sweetly,  may  have  been — who  knows? — one 


THE   EARS   OF  THE   ARMY  5 

of  those  alert  young  women  in  trim  blue  serge  who  sat 
before  the  switchboard  at  Great  Headquarters  and 
handled  the  messages  of  the  Commander-in-Chief 
himself. 

For  a  number  of  years  before  the  war  it  was  recog- 
nized in  Washington  that  should  the  United  States 
ever  become  involved  in  a  conflict  with  a  first-class 
Power,  the  handful  of  officers  and  men  who  composed 
the  personnel  of  the  Signal  Corps  would  be  utterly 
1/  incapable  of  handling,  unaided,  the  enormous  system 
of  communications  which  is  so  essential  to  the  success 
of  a  modern  army.  It  was  perfectly  evident,  more-" 
over,  that  should  the  country  suddenly  find  itself 
confronting  an  emergency,  there  would  be  no  time  to 
train  officers  and  men  in  the  highly  technical  require- 
ments of  the  Signal  Corps.  To  insure  the  success  of 
the  great  citizen  armies  which  we  would  be  compelled 
to  raise  with  the  utmost  speed  in  case  of  war,  it  was 
essential  that  there  should  be  available  an  adequate 
supply  of  men  who  were  already  thoroughly  trained 
in  the  installation  and  operation  of  the  two  chief  forms 
of  military  communication — telegraphs  and  telephones. 
And  this  trained  personnel  was  at  hand  in  the  em- 
ployees of  the  great  telephone  and  telegraph  com- 
panies. It  was  not,  however,  until  June,  19 16,  when 
Congress,  tardily  awakening  to  the  imminent  danger 
of  sparks  falling  on  our  own  roof  from  the  great  con- 
flagration in  Europe,  passed  the  National  Defense 
Act,  which  authorized,  among  other  things,  the  crea- 
tion of  the  Signal  Officers'  Reserve  Corps  and  the  Signal 
Enlisted  Reserve  Corps,  that  the  way  was  opened  for 


6  THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

definite  action.  Shortly  thereafter  the  Bell  Telephone 
System  was  approached  by  the  Signal  Corps  with  the 
suggestion  that  a  number  of  reserve  Signal  Corps  units 
be  recruited  from  its  various  subsidiary  organizations. 
The  suggestion  met  with  the  hearty  approval  of  the 
Bell  officials  and  the  work  of  organization  was  turned 
over  to  the  Bell's  chief  engineer,  Mr.  J.  J.  Carty,  the 
foremost  telephone  expert  in  the  world.  In  accordance 
with  the  plans  drawn  up  by  Mr.  Carty,  there  were 
organized  from  the  employees  of  the  New  York,  New 
England,  Pennsylvania,  Chesapeake  and  Potomac, 
Central  Union,  Cincinnati,  Northwestern,  Southwest- 
ern, Southern,  Mountain  States,  and  Pacific  telephone 
companies  twelve  reserve  telegraph  battalions.  I 
might  mention,  in  passing,  that  Mr.  Carty  was  given 
a  commission  as  major,  was  later  promoted  to  colonel, 
was  made  chief  of  the  telegraphs  and  telephones  of 
the  A.  E.  F.,  and  for  his  invaluable  work  was  awarded 
the  Distinguished  Service  Medal. 

While  the  Bell  System  was  devoting  its  efforts 
to  the  raising  of  the  telegraph  battalions,  the  Chief 
Signal  Officer  of  the  Army  asked  the  co-operation  of 
the  Bell's  great  rival,  the  United  States  Independent 
Telephone  Association,  in  the  organization  of  a  num- 
ber of  field  signal  battalions  for  front-line  work.  Mr. 
F.  B.  McKinnon,  vice-president  of  the  association 
assumed  charge  of  the  work  and  enthusiastically  threw 
himself  and  all  the  agencies  at  his  disposal  into  the 
business  of  recruiting,  ten  field  battalions  eventually 
being  raised  by  the  Independent  System. 

But  the  demand  for  trained  personnel  from  the 


THE   EARS   OF  THE  ARMY  7 

telegraph  and  telephone  companies  did  not  end  with 
the  formation  of  the  units  I  have  just  mentioned. 
With  the  declaration  of  war  and  the  despatch  to  France 
of  the  first  American  contingents,  it  was  realized  that 
their  work  had  only  begun.  Though  the  telegraph 
and  field  battalions  contained  many  experts  on  teleg- 
raphy and  telephony,  they  were  formed  primarily  as 
constructive  and  operative  units  for  comparatively 
short  Hnes.  But  the  lines  in  the  A.  E.  F.  did  not  re- 
main short,  and  as  they  grew  in  length  and  in  number, 
new  equipment  and  different  types  of  technicians  had 
to  be  employed.  In  August,  191 7,  there  came  from 
France  the  first  call  for  specialists,  to  include  telephone- 
repeater  experts,  printer-telegraph  mechanicians,  print- 
ing-telegraph traffic  supervisors,  and  similar  highl}^ 
trained  men.  Almost  at  the  same  time  there  was  re- 
ceived a  cablegram  from  General  Pershing  requesting 
the  immediate  organization  in  Paris  of  a  Research^ 
and  Inspection  Department,  in  order  that  the  best, 
latest,  and  most  reliable  signal  equipment  might  be 
assured  for  the  American  troops.  To  Colonel  Carty 
was  assigned  the  task  of  selecting  the  twelve  scientists 
to  be  the  officers  of  the  new  division  and  the  fifty  en- 
listed assistants  who  were  necessary  to  commence  the 
work.  He  found  them  in  the  remarkable  Research 
Department  of  the  Western  Electric  Company,  which 
is  closely  allied  with  the  Bell  System,  Mr.  Herbert 
Shreeve  of  the  Western  Electric  being  given  a  com- 
mission as  lieutenant-colonel  and  placed  in  charge 
of  the  work.  The  improvements  made  and_the_  de-_ 
vices   introduced   by   this   division   made   the   signal 


1/ 


8  THE  AR]MY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

system  of  the  A.  E.  F.  one  of  the  marvels  of  the  war. 
So  wide-spread  and  reliable  were  the  American  com- 
munications, and  so  efficient  the  American  operators, 
that  on  more  than  one  occasion  Marshal  Foch,  during 
his  tours  of  inspection  along  the  battle-front,  went 
many  miles  out  of  his  way  in  order  to  use  the  Amer- 
ican wires  for  important  conversations.  But  so  rapid 
was  the  growth  of  the  telegraph  and  telephone  lines 
in  France  that  hardly  had  one  requisition  for  additional 
personnel  been  filled  before  another  was  received.  Yet 
always  the  great  systems  of  the  United  States  answered 
the  call,  and  this  despite  their  crying  need  for  such 
personnel  at  home,  where  war  conditions  had  enor- 
mously increased  their  business,  and  the  difiiculty 
which  they  were  experiencing  in  making  replacements 
in  their  own  forces.  In  fact,  of  the  2,800  officers  com- 
missioned in  the  Signal  Corps  during  the  war,  fully 
30  per  cent  had  been  trained  with  the  telegraph  and 
telephone  systems,  and  the  percentage  of  enlisted 
men  was  equally  high.  The  response  made  by  these 
great  corporations  to  the  nation's  call  constitutes,  in- 
deed, one  of  the  most  gratifying  incidents  of  the 
war. 

When  the  history  of  the  great  conflict  comes  to  be 
written,  the  story  of  the  achievements  of  the  telegraph 
and  field  battalions  of  the  Signal  Corps  will  form  one 
of  its  most  fascinating  chapters.  Working  imder  the 
most  trying  conditions,  in  a  land  with  whose  customs 
they  were  unfamiliar  and  whose  language  they  did  not 
understand,  with  equipment  and  material  frequently 
improvised  from  whatever  was  at  hand,  they  covered 


^^^>r-^ 


r^ 


\y:?^ 


.-  ._  S^Si^s^ii-L 


^^?5«CTa»^'jr;a;^ 


Photi'-rjph  by  Sii^nal  Corps.  U.  S.  A. 

LAYING  A  HELD  TELEGRAPH  LLNE. 
They  established  a  standard  of  speed  and  efficiency. 


SIGNAL  CORPS  MEN  ERECTL\(;  A  HELD  TELEPHONE. 
Working  under  the  most  trying  conditions,  these  men  covered  France  with  the  network  of  wires. 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY  9 

France  from  the  seaboard  to  the  Rhine  with  the  net- 
work of  their  wires;  they  made  it  as  easy  for  Great 
Headquarters  to  communicate  with  a  remote  outpost 
in  Alsace  or  the  Argonne  as  it  is  for  a  brokerage  house 
in  Wall  Street  to  communicate  with  the  manager  of  its 
Chicago  branch,  and  it  established  a  standard  of  speed 
and  efficiency  which  will  make  the  French  dissatisfied 
with  their  own  services  for  years  to  come.  Their  work 
was,  in  the  words  of  General  Pershing,  "a,  striking  ex- 
ample of  the  wisdom  of  placing  highly  skilled  technical 
men  in  the  places  where  their  experience  and  skill  will 
count  the  most." 

Despite  the  unending  stream  of  men  which  con- 
stantly flowed  Europeward  for  work  on  the  "A.  E.  F. 
Tel.  &  Tel.  Co.,"  as  our  military  telegraphs  and  tele- 
phones were  familiarly  known,  more  were  ever  needed, 
and  it  was  finally  decided,  though,  I  believe,  with  con- 
siderable reluctance  on  the  part  of  certain  old-fashioned 
officers  in  the  War  Department,  to  replace  the  men 
operators,  wherever  possible,  with  girls.  Again  the 
American  systems  were  called  upon,  this  time  to  furnish 
young  women  who  possessed  the  necessary-  technical 
experience,  and  to  give  them  a  working  knowledge  of 
French.  Imagine  the  furor  of  excitement  that  swept 
through  ever>'  telephone-exchange  in  the  country  when 
it  was  learned  that  girls  were  wanted  for  service  in  the 
A.  E.  F !  Where  was  the  red-blooded,  adventure- 
loving  American  girl  who  could  resist  such  a  call? 
Soon  the  company  officials  as  well  as  the  Signal  Corps 
itself  were  almost  swamped  by  the  flood  of  applications 
that  poured  in.     Then  the  Signal  Corps  found  itself 


lo        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE    ARMY 

confronted  by  the  necessity  of  educating  the  apphcants; 
to  do  this  it  had  to  operate  a  whole  system  of  boarding- 
schools  for  girls.  Such  schools  were  established  in 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  Chicago,  San  Francisco,  Jer- 
sey City,  Atlantic  City,  and  Lancaster,  Pa.,  the  can- 
didates for  overseas  duty  being  given  intensive  courses 
in  miUtary  telephony,  French,  and  European  geogra- 
phy, together  with  lectures  on  French  manners  and 
customs,  and,  I  might  add  (this  in  a  whisper),  on  their 
own  behavior,  particular  emphasis  being  laid  on  the 
evils  of  flirting,  impertinence,  and  gum-chewing.  Up- 
ward of  200  girls  were  finally  selected,  provided  with 
uniforms  and  overseas  caps  of  navy  serge — which 
looked  as  though  they  might  have  been  designed  by 
the  technical  experts  of  the  Signal  Corps — and  sent  to 
France  as  full-fledged  members  of  the  A.  E.  F.  No 
pupils  at  a  fashionable  girls'  boarding-school  were  ever 
more  strictly  chaperoned.  At  Tours  quarters  were 
built  for  them  on  an  island  in  the  Loire,  which  was 
connected  with  the  mainland  by  a  narrow  foot-bridge, 
the  military  police  on  duty  at  the  end  of  the  bridge 
only  permitting  the  girls  to  "go  ashore"  when  they 
were  accompanied  by  a  matron  or  were  in  pairs.  Not- 
withstanding the  strictness  of  the  regulations  under 
which  they  lived  and  worked,  it  was  a  girl's  own  fault 
if  she  came  home  unengaged.  Though  it  goes  without 
saying  that  the  military  authorities  took  every  precau- 
tion against  exposing  the  girls  to  danger,  those  who 
were  on  duty  in  towns  near  the  front,  such  as  Toul,  on 
numerous  occasions  tasted  the  excitement  of  German 
air-raids,  one  of  them  being  cited  in  army  orders  for 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY  ii 

remaining  at  her  post  and  coolly  continuing  to  operate 
her  switchboard  "whence  all  but  she  had  fled." 

I  always  liked  the  true  story  of  the  telephone-girl 
who,  upon  her  arrival  at  an  American  port  of  debarka- 
tion, informed  the  landing  officer  that  she  was  a  second 
lieutenant. 

"But  why  do  you  call  yourself  a  second  lieuten- 
ant ?  "  he  inquired.  "  No  commissions  have  been  given 
to  telephone-girls." 

"I  don't  see  what  that's  got  to  do  with  it,"  she 
retorted,  tossing  her  head.  "I  get  more  pay  than  a 
second  lieutenant,  and  I've  been  of  more  use  to  the 
army  than  any  second  lieutenant  that  I  know." 

In  order  to  assess  at  their  true  worth  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  Signal  Corps  during  the  war,  it  is  essential 
to  realize  the  amazing  number,  variety,  and  magnitude 
of  the  tasks  the  corps  was  called  upon  to  perform. 
The  Signal  Corps  is  a  staff  department  charged  with 
providing  means  of  communication  for  the  army,  both" 
at  home  and  overseas.  According  to  the  present  tables 
of  organization,  one  field  signal  battalion  is  usually 
.attached  to  each  division,  the  telegraph  battalions 
being  used  as  corps  or  army  troops.  Generally  speak- 
ing, the  telegraph  battalion  maintains  communications 
in  the  rear;  the  field  battalion  usually  operates  with 
the  combat  troops  at  the  front.  In  addition  to  these 
troops,  there  are  numerous  special  units,  such  as  pigeon 
companies,  radio  companies,  photographic  and  mete- 
orological sections,  which  are  attached  to  corps,  armies, 
or  to  General  Headquarters.  In  France  where  hun- 
dreds of  miles  separated  our  base  ports  from  our  troops 


12        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE   ARMY 

on  the  firing-line,  there  devolved  upon  the  Signal  Corps 
an  enormous  amount  of  work  in  the  area  known  as 
the  Services  of  Supply.  The  magnitude  of  the  tele- 
graph and  telephone  systems  in  the  S.  0.  S.  is  illus- 
trated by  the  fact  that  when  the  Armistice  was  signed, 
the  Signal  Corps  in  France  was  operating  96,000  miles 
of  circuits  known  as  "long  lines,"  with  282  telephone- 
exchanges,  and  a  total  of  nearly  9,000  stations.  The 
requirements  for  ware  in  the  field  were  even  greater. 
When  our  operations  were  at  their  height  in  the 
summer  of  19 18,  it  was  estimated  that  the  Signal 
Corps  would  require  68,000  miles  of  "outpost  wire" 
a  month  for  use  at  the  front  in  connecting  telegraph 
and  telephone  systems.  Outpost  wire  is,  I  ought  to 
explain,  a  development  of  the  war.  It  is  composed 
of  seven  fine  wires,  four  of  them  bronze  and  three  of 
them  of  hard  carbon  steel,  stranded  together  and 
coated  first  with  rubber,  then  with  cotton  yarn,  and 
finally  paraffined.  This  wire  is  produced  in  six  colors 
— red,  yellow,  green,  brown,  black,  and  gray — in  order 
that  it  may  readily  be  identified  in  the  field,  the  red 
wire  running,  for  example,  to  the  artillery,  the  yellow 
to  regimental  headquarters,  green  to  brigade  head- 
quarters, and  so  on.  The  enormous  amount  of  this 
wire  required  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  very  little 
of  it  was  saved,  it  being  out  of  the  question  to  pick  it 
up  during  the  hurry  and  excitement  of  an  advance, 
while  hundreds  of  miles  of  it  were  destroyed  during  the 
heavy  bombardments  which  usually  preceded  an 
attack. 

Within  the  memory  of  many  of  us  the  size  of  com- 


THE  EARS   OF  THE   ARMY  13 

bat  armies  was  largely  determined  by  tke  eiEciency  and_ 
scope  of  their  signal  systems,  it  being  essential  that 
the  forces  in  the  field  should  be  kept  uithin  a  size 
which  permitted  of  communication  being  maintained 
between  all  units  by  means  of  runners,  riders,  or  visual 
signals.  Those  were  the  days  when  messengers,  often 
chosen  by  lot,  crawled  through  the  enemy's  lines  at 
night  in  order  to  bring  reinforcements  to  beleaguered 
garrisons;  when  stories  of  ambush  and  massacre  or 
urgent  appeals  for  ammunition  and  food  were  brought 
to  headquarters  by  weary  riders  clinging  to  the  manes 
of  reeking  ponies;  or  when,  in  the  Indian  country,  cav- 
alry columns  communicated  with  each  other  by  means 
of  heliograph  messages  flashed  from  mountain- top  to 
mountain- top,  or  signal-fires  curling  slowly  skyward. 

But  all  this  changed  with  the  introduction  of  the 
telegraph  and  the  telephone,  the  communications  of  an 
army  thereafter  being  limited  only  by  the  amount  of 
its  wire.  A  far  greater  change  came,  however,  with 
the  introduction  of  the  radio  or  wireless,  whose  area 
of  operations  is  limited  only  by  the  power  of  the  send- 
ing apparatus.  Now  it  should  be  kept  in  mind  that 
each  of  the  systems  of  military  signalling  which  I  have 
already  enumerated — telegraphs,  telephones,  radios, 
panels,  lamps,  flags,  pigeons,  runners,  dogs,  and  the 
rest — is  an  adjunct  to  the  others — when  one  fails, 
another  is  employed  to  get  the  message  through.  If 
the  wires  of  the  field  telegraph  and  telephone  are  cut 
by  a  barrage,  the  radio  is  employed;  if  a  shell  knocks 
out  the  radio  set,  the  message  is  intrusted  to  a  pigeon; 
should  the  pigeon  fail,  a  runner  attempts  to  take  it 


14        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

through;  and  if  the  runner  is  killed,  the  message  can 
be  communicated,  either  by  means  of  rockets  or  by 
cloth  panels  spread  upon  the  ground,  to  the  aviators 
circling  overhead. 

Despite  the  new  methods  of  transmitting  messages 
produced  by  the  war,  the  telephone  remains  the  back- 
bone of  the  military  signal  system.  Though  the  porta- 
ble telephone  instrument  used  by  all  front-line  troops 
was  manufactured  in  the  United  States  for  commercial 
purposes  prior  to  the  war,  the_  switchboard  in  most 
general  use  by  mobile  troops  was  originally  developed 
by  the  French,  being  the  only  telephone  equipment 
used  by  the  American  forces  which  was  not  of  Ameri- 
can design.  This  switchboard,  which  was  built  in 
units  so  that  it  could  be  expanded  from  four  to  twelve 
lines,  was  the  "Central"  of  the  front-line  dugout,  being 
so  compact  that  it  could  be  carried  as  part  of  the  equip- 
ment of  a  soldier  and  quickly  put  into  operation.  For 
the  use  of  the  larger  field  units  there  was  designed  a 
camp  switchboard,  with  provision  for  forty  wires, 
which  when  in  transit  resembled  a  commercial  travel- 
ler's sample-trunk.  A  third  type  of  switchboard,  for 
use  at  headquarters  in  the  zone  of  combat,  but  where 
extreme  portability  was  not  essential,  was  designed  in 
units,  like  a  certain  popular  style  of  sectional  bookcase, 
and  could  readily  be  increased  to  any  size  required. 
An  important  auxiliary  to  the  field-telephone  lines  was 
the  buzzerphone,  an  American  device  for  use  where 
extraordinary  secrecy  was  imperative,  it  being  impossi- 
ble for  the  German  Listening-in  Service  to  eavesdrop 
on  messages  sent  by  this  method. 


i 


A    MLMBKk  OF  THE  SKiXAL  C  (jRi',-    -I.MjIM,   .ML,-,.,Ai,l,.,   ll\    MLA.\.^  OF 

A  LAMP. 


THE   EARS   OF  THE   ARMY  15 

Prior  to  the  war  the  "lance-pole"  was  used  exclu- 
sively by  American  troops  in  the  field,  as  it  permitted 
of  rapid  line  construction  and  served  its  purpose  ad- 
mirably in  open  warfare.  The  conditions  prevailing  in 
Europe  made  the  use  of  this  pole  impracticable,  how- 
ever, and  where  poles  were  used  at  all  they  consisted 
of  very  short  stakes  wdth  special  cross-arms,  miniature 
copies,  in  fact,  of  the  commercial  equipment  com- 
monly used  in  the  United  States.  The  enormous 
mileage  of  the  trench-lines  called  for  vast  quantities  of 
insulators,  cross-arms,  and  other  special  fittings,  in  all 
of  which  there  was  great  wastage,  for  though  the  in- 
struments used  on  the  military  lines  usually  had  a 
certain  degree  of  protection,  the  lines  themselves  were 
constantly  exposed  to  artillery  and  airplane  bombard- 
ment. 

A  factor  which  greatly  complicated  the  supply 
of  the  front-line  forces  with  wire  was  the  necessity 
for  maintaining  two-way  or  twisted-pair  lines  in  _prder 
to  avoid  giving  information  to  the  enemy,  for  the.dfeu. 
lectors  used  in  the  German  listening-posts  were  so 
highly  developed  that  a  telegraph  or  telephone  mes- 
sage sent  over  a  "grounded"  or  single-conductor  Hne 
was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  sent  direct  to  Berlin. 
This  necessity  for  a  double-conductor  line  relegated 
the  old  field-wire  of  open  warfare  to  the  scrap-heap, 
a  long  series  of  experiments  being  required  to  produce 
a  twisted-pair  wire  which  was  light  enough  to  permit 
of  easy  portability  and  rapid  laying,  strong  enough 
to  stand  the  strain  of  heav}^  traffic  and  shell-shock, 
and  withal  so  well  insulated  that  "leaks"  to  the  ground 


i6        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

might  not  reveal  to  the  enemy  Hsteners-in  facts  in- 
tended to  be  strictly  confidential.  The  enormous  de- 
mands for  all  types  of  wire  and  cables  which  came 
both  from  the  A.  E.  F.  and  from  our  allies  necessitated 
the  United  States  being  combed  for  every  foot  of  avail- 
able material  and  the  speeding  up  of  production  until 
every  wire-mill  in  America  was  working  twenty-four 
hours  a  day.  Yet,  in  spite  of  labor  troubles,  housing 
problems,  and  the  difficulties  of  obtaining  material 
and  transportation,  the  wire-makers  at  home  filled 
every  requirement  of  the  soldiers  overseas. 

Of  all  the  varied  activities  of  the  Signal  Corps, 
none  was  more  fascinating  or  mysterious  in  its  opera- 
tion than  the  work  of  the  Radio  Intelligence  Sections, 
particularly  the  so-called  listening-stations,  which,  by 
means  of  supersensitive  receiving  and  amplifying  in- 
struments electrically  connected  with  ground-plates 
placed  as  close  as  possible  to  the  enemy  positions, 
were  enabled  to  overhear  the  ground-telegraph  opera- 
tions of  the  Germans  and  the  conversation  leaking 
from  defective  or  non-metallic  telephone  and  telegraph 
circuits.  This  remarkable  service,  some  of  whose 
achievements  would  seem  to  the  layman  to  verge 
on  the  miraculous,  combined  the  discoveries  of  Ohm, 
Volta,  and  Galvani  with  the  methods  of  LeCoq  and 
Sherlock  Holmes.  These  stations  could,  of  course, 
operate  successfully  only  under  favorable  conditions, 
the  chief  requisites  being  that  the  enemy's  trenches 
should  not  be  too  far  away  and  that  the  intervening 
terrain  should  be  free  of  creeks,  gullies,  or  other  features 
which  might  sidetrack  the  currents  which  it  was  de- 


THE   EARS   OF   THE   ARMY  17 

sired  to  intercept.  The  listening-stations  were  usually 
situated  in  the  second  line  of  trenches,  the  ground- 
plates  being  placed  about  300  yards  apart.  In  order 
to  obtain  satisfactory  results  it  was  necessary  that 
the  ground-plates  should  be  placed  as  close  to  the 
enemy  as  possible,  the  work  of  installing  them,  almost 
under  the  noses  of  the  Huns,  being  one  of  the  most 
hazardous  duties  which  the  signal  troops  were  called 
upon  to  perform.  The  men  operating  the  listening- 
stations  had  to  remain  on  duty  for  a  week  at  a  time — 
a  considerably  longer  tour  of  duty  than  was  required, 
under  ordinary  conditions,  of  the  infantrymen.  They 
were  expected  to  possess  a  fluent  knowledge  of  German 
and  to  be  able  to  both  speak  and  understand  it  as  well 
as  they  did  English,  though  this  requirement  was  not 
always  fulfilled  toward  the  end.  They  were  thoroughly 
coached,  moreover,  in  German  military  phrases  and 
colloquialisms  and  had  to  be  proficient  in  recording 
ground-telegraphy  code,  which,  though  slow,  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  master.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore, 
that  the  Listening-in  Service  demanded  of  its  operators 
continuous  interest  and  constant  vigilance,  together 
with  a  sufficiently  active  imagination  to  enable  them 
to  piece  together  the  broken  or  garbled  fragments  of 
messages  which  their  instruments  might  pick  up,  and 
to  deduce  from  these  messages  what  the  enemy  was 
doing  or  what  he  intended  to  do.  Listening-in  was 
very  far  from  being  a  one-sided  game,  however,  for 
the  Germans,  who  were  thoroughly  conversant  with 
its  possibilities  and  limitations,  maintained  a  service 
which  was  nearly,  if  not  fully,  equal  to  our  own.    The 


i8        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

real  superiority  of  our  service  lay,  not  in  its  equip- 
ment, but  in  the  boyish  enthusiasm  of  its  personnel, 
many  of  whom  were  university  undergraduates  when 
the  war  began.  With  them  the  work  never  assumed 
the  aspect  of  a  daily  task  which  had  to  be  performed 
whether  they  liked  it  or  not:  they  regarded  it  rather 
as  a  game,  interesting,  fascinating,  exciting.  The 
quickness  with  which  they  grasped  the  technicalities 
of  the  service  was  amazing.  I  knew  of  one  case  where 
a  soldier  of  a  Listening-in  Section,  wholly  without 
previous  experience  in  the  work,  overhearing  a  tele- 
phone conversation  in  the  enemy's  lines  which  in- 
dicated that  the  watches  in  that  sector  were  being 
synchronized,  deduced  that  a  raid  on  the  American 
trenches  was  being  planned.  He  promptly  acquainted 
the  divisional  intelligence  officer  with  his  conclusions, 
and  when  the  Germans  launched  their  attack,  expect- 
ing to  take  the  verdamte  Yankees  completely  by  sur- 
prise, they  were  greeted  by  a  burst  of  rifle  and  machine- 
gun  fire  which  almost  annihilated  them.  After  the 
m.oving  warfare  began  it  was,  of  course,  extremely 
difficult  to  maintain  these  listening-stations,  but  when 
the  advance  halted,  even  for  a  night,  listening-stations 
were  always  established  if  conditions  permitted. 

A  far-fetched  but,  as  it  proved,  entirely  correct 
deduction  was  made  by  the  operator  of  a  listening- 
post  whose  curiosity  was  aroused  by  the  sudden  change 
in  the  nature  of  the  conversation  taking  place  over 
the  enemy's  lines,  familiarity  interspersed  with  pro- 
fanity abruptly  giving  way  to  studied  politeness.  From 
this  he  reasoned  that  a  new  division  had  moved  in 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY  19 

during  the  night.  Prisoners  captured  the  next  day 
verified  his  deduction.  Just  before  the  St.  Mihiel 
offensive  one  of  our  operators  noted  that  the  telephone 
conversations  between  the  enemy  units  opposite  his 
station  had  almost  ceased,  presumably  because  a  troop 
movement  was  in  progress  which  they  did  not  dare 
to  discuss  for  fear  of  being  overheard,  the  truth  being 
that  the  Germans  were  quietly  withdrawing.  Though 
he  had  practically  no  conversation  to  guide  him,  this 
by  no  means  discouraged  the  American  listener,  who, 
by  comparing  the  intensity  of  the  T.  P.  S.  {telegraphie 
par  sol)  signals  he  overheard,  deduced  with  amazing 
accuracy  the  movements  of  the  retiring  troops.  In 
comparison  with  such  feats  of  deduction,  Sherlock 
Holmes's  ability  to  deduce  a  stranger's  occupation 
from  the  condition  of  his  finger-nails  or  the  soles  of 
his  boots  seems  absurdly  commonplace,  doesn't  it? 

A  youth  in  search  of  excitement  beyond  that 
usually  provided  by  battle  could  always  find  it  by 
joining  the  Listening-in  Service.  In  March,  1918, 
the  American  troops  holding  a  certain  sector  were 
suddenl}'  ordered  to  retire  to  a  second  line  of  resistance, 
but  through  an  oversight  the  orders  for  withdrawal 
were  not  passed  on  to  the  Signal  Corps  men  who  were 
operating  the  listening-stations  out  in  front.  Serenely 
unconscious,  therefore,  of  the  fact  that  their  comrades 
had  fallen  back  and  that  German  raiding-parties  were 
prowling  all  about  them  in  the  darkness,  they  remained 
at  their  post  throughout  the  night.  It  was  not  until 
the  American  infantry  reoccupied  their  original  posi- 
tion in  the  morning  that  the  men  in  the  listening-station 


20        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

learned  that  for  eight  hours  they  had  been  the  only 
occupants  of  the  sector. 

While  crawling  over  No  Man's  Land  to  repair  a 
break  in  a  line  connecting  his  station  with  a  ground- 
plate,  a  Signal  Corps  man  discovered  a  wire  leading 
straight  toward  the  enemy's  position.  Being  of  an 
inquiring  turn  of  mind,  he  followed  it  up  on  hands  and 
knees  imtil  he  actually  penetrated  the  German  trenches, 
where  he  made  the  interesting  discovery  that  the 
enemy's  listening-station  had  tapped  the  same  ground 
which  we  were  using.  Needless  to  say,  he  lost  no  time 
in  crawling  back  and  changing  his  ground-plates.  This 
feat  was  paralleled  by  a  soldier  who  followed  an  Amer- 
ican raid  into  the  German  trenches,  and,  unobserved 
during  the  excitement,  succeeded  in  attaching  a  wire 
to  one  of  their  ground-plates  which  was  well  within 
their  lines,  and,  therefore,  presumably  in  no  danger 
of  being  tampered  with.  By  this  means  he  listened- 
in  on  the  enemy's  conversations  for  several  days  before 
his  wire  was  discovered  and  cut. 

Though  the  work  of  the  Radio -Intercept  and 
Goniometric  Direction-Finding  stations  lacked  in 
some  measure  the  danger  connected  with  that  of  the 
ground  listening-posts,  it  nevertheless  provided  many 
interesting  incidents  in  the  life  of  the  Signal  Corps 
man.  The  function  of  radio-intercept  stations  is,  as 
their  name  implies,  the  interception  of  enemy  radio 
messages.  Goniometric  stations  are  used,  on  the  other 
hand,  for  locating  enemy  radio-stations,  the  work  being 
carried  on  on  much  the  same  principles  as  flash-ranging, 
which  I  have  described  at  some  length  in  another  chap- 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY  21 

ter.  By  placing  a  goniometer — an  instrument  for 
measuring  angles — at  each  end  of  a  base  line  of  known 
length,  it  is  a  comparatively  simple  matter  to  ascertain 
the  angle  of  direction  of  an  enemy  radio-station,  and, 
by  prolonging  the  lines  of  these  angles  until  they  inter- 
sect, the  location  of  the  station  can  be  approximately 
determined.  That  done,  the  information  was  sent  to 
the  artillery,  which  proceeded  to  sweep  the  vicinity 
in  which  the  radio-station  was  known  to  be  with  a 
hurricane  of  shell.  So  highly  was  this  system  of  radio 
detection  developed  that,  after  the  salient  at  St.  Mihiel 
had  been  cleared  of  Germans,  every  radio-station  which 
our  Goniometric  Service  had  located  previous  to  the 
attack  was  verified,  the  greatest  error  in  location  being 
approximately  500  yards.  In  many  cases  some  of 
the  German  wireless  equipment  was  still  in  the  dug- 
outs, and  much  interesting  printed  matter  was  picked 
up.  This  was  the  first  corroboration  of  the  effective- 
ness of  our  Radio  Intelligence  work. 

Just  as  the  naturalists  can  reconstruct  from  a 
few  bones  a  prehistoric  monster  which  they  have  never 
seen,  so  the  goniometric  ex-perts  are  able  to  gain  an 
amazingly  accurate  idea  of  the  organization  of  an  army 
by  locating  its  radio-stations,  for  the  lines  of  radio 
communication  which  spread  fan-wise  from  army 
headquarters  form  a  sort  of  skeleton,  as  it  were,  of 
the  army's  organization,  the  location  of  the  various 
stations  and  their  distance  from  headquarters  indicat- 
ing quite  accurately  the  position  of  the  corps,  divisions, 
brigades,  regiments,  and  battalions.  This  fact  was, 
of  course,  as  well  known  to  the  Germans  as  to  our- 


22        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

selves,  and  consequently  extraordinary  precautions 
were  taken  to  prevent  the  stations  from  being  located. 
Such  a  system  of  communications  is  known  in  military 
parlance  as  a  "net,"  that  serving  an  army  being  called 
an  ''army  net"  and  that  of  a  corps  a  "corps  net." 
Just  before  the  American  offensive  was  launched  at 
St.  Mihiel  a  false  corps  net  was  set  up  considerably 
to  the  east  of  the  point  selected  for  the  attack,  this 
net  being  operated  in  as  close  imitation  as  possible 
of  the  real  thing.  Thousands  of  faked  messages  were 
sent  in  code,  precisely  as  though  the  movements  of  an 
army  corps  depended  upon  them,  and,  to  add  to  the 
verisimihtude  of  the  proceeding,  they  were  strongly 
seasoned  with  the  profane  and  violent  Enghsh  with 
which  American  radio  operators  are  accustomed  to  in- 
terlard their  conversations.  The  German  goniometric 
operators  promptly  located  this  network  of  radio- 
stations,  and  as  the  messages  which  were  being  trans- 
mitted appeared  to  be  perfectly  genuine,  they  naturally 
concluded  that  they  had  discovered  the  unsuspected 
presence  of  an  American  army  corps,  whereupon 
the  German  High  Command  took  steps  to  move  its 
reserves  to  the  area  which  apparently  was  threatened. 
There  is  no  means  of  knowing  how  effective  this  in- 
genious stratagem  really  proved,  but  the  best  answer 
would  seem  to  be  the  surprisingly  slight  resistance 
which  we  encountered  at  St.  Mihiel. 

The  operation  of  the  mobile  radio-stations  which 
accompanied  the  smaller  infantry  units  was  always 
a  most  hazardous  and  trying  business,  requiring  not 
j3nly  courage  but  a  very  high  degree  of  resourcefulness 


THE   EARS   OF   THE   ARMY  23 

and  self-possession.  In  one  case  that  I  know  of  a  Signal 
Corps  unit  received  orders  to  have  a  trench  radio-station 
installed  at  a  certain  exposed  point  by  a  certain  time. 
They  followed  their  instructions  to  the  letter,  but 
when  their  instruments  were  set  up  and  they  were 
ready  for  business,  they  discovered,  to  their  extreme 
annoyance,  that  the  infantry  which  was  scheduled 
to  occupy  the  position  had  failed  to  materialize  and 
that  they  and  their  radio  set  were  well  in  advance  of 
our  lines.  From  their  position  in  a  shell-hole  they 
called  up  the  regimental  commander,  reported  that 
they  were  located  according  to  instructions,  and  in- 
quired what  they  were  expected  to  do.  Whereupon 
the  infantry  lost  no  time  in  moving  up  and  occupying 
the  position  which,  as  the  signalers  mockingly  as- 
serted, they  had  been  holding  for  them. 

The  exigencies  of  the  Great  War  wrought  many 
strange  and  startling  transformations.  Scientists  who 
had  devoted  their  entire  lives  to  discovering  methods 
for  prolonging  life  turned  their  genius  to  finding  new 
and  effective  ways  of  taking  it;  the  tractor  of  the  West- 
ern wheat-fields  became  the  tank  of  the  battle-fields 
in  Flanders;  the  machinery  and  chemicals  used  for 
the  manufacture  of  dyestuffs  were  converted  to  the 
manufacture  of  poisonous  gases — and  the  dove  be- 
came the  army  carrier-pigeon,  bearing,  instead  of  the 
olive-branch  of  peace,  messages  of  battle.  Though  I 
find  that  many  Americans  seem  to  be  under  the  im- 
pression that  pigeons  were  unreliable  and  compara- 
tively little  used,  they  were,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
most  trustworthy  of  all  the  systems  of  message  trans- 


24        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

mission  employed  by  the  fighting  armies.  When  every- 
thing else  failed,  when  the  wires  of  the  field  telegraph 
and  telephone  had  been  destroyed  by  the  German 
shell-storms,  when  the  radio  installations  had  been 
demolished,  when  the  runners  had  been  killed  and 
the  aviators  driven  back  by  the  air-barrages,  it  was 
the  pigeons  which  took  the  messages  through.  The 
official  accounts  of  their  exploits  read  like  the  wildest 
fiction.  Over  500  birds  were  used  by  our  troops  in 
the  St.  Mihiel  offensive  alone.  Through  the  messages 
brought  by  pigeons,  American  Headquarters  learned 
of  the  whereabout  of  Major  Whittlesey  and  his  "Lost 
Battalion."  How  trustworthy  were  these  winged 
messengers  is  proved  by  the  carefully  kept  records  of 
the  Allied  Armies,  which  show  that  of  the  thousands 
of  messages  intrusted  to  pigeons  during  the  four  years 
of  the  war,  96  per  cent  were  delivered. 

The  use  of  pigeons  as  messengers  is  as  old  as  re- 
corded history,  the  Chinese,  Egyptians,  Greeks,  and 
Romans  all  having  used  birds  for  this  purpose.  Word 
of  the  victory  at  Waterloo  was  brought  to  England  by 
pigeons,  and  pigeons  carried  from  New  York  to  Wash- 
ington the  news  that  Napoleon  had  signed  the  treaty 
which  added  Louisiana  to  the  Union.  Among  the  old- 
est and  most  successful  pigeon- trainers  are  the  Bel- 
gians, many  of  the  best  flying  strains  used  by  the 
French,  British,  and  American  armies  having  been 
developed  from  Belgian  stock.  When  the  Hunnish 
hordes  swept  across  Belgium,  one  of  their  first 
measures  was  to  confiscate  or  kill  all  pigeons.  For 
a  Belgian  to  have  in  his  possession  a  carrier-pigeon  was 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY  25 

for  him  to  risk  a  court  martial  and  death  before  a 
firing-party.  Many  of  the  pigeons  taken  from  the 
Belgians  were  sent  back  to  Germany  for  breeding  pur- 
poses, producing  birds  which  served  against  their  for- 
mer masters,  but  when  the  Americans  established  their 
watch  on  the  Rhine,  they  ordered  the  immediate  release 
of  all  pigeons  in  the  area  of  occupation,  thus  giving 
thousands  of  feathered  exiles  a  chance  to  fly  back  to 
their  old  homes  in  Flanders. 

The  Carrier-Pigeon  Service  of  the  American  Army 
is  a  part  of  the  Signal  Corps,  being  composed  of  officers 
and  men  who  are  expert  pigeon  breeders  and  handlers, 
and  who  have  the  ability  to  impart  their  knowledge  to 
others.  The  pigeon  section,  which  was  organized 
shortly  after  our  entry  into  the  war,  consisted  of  two 
companies  with  a  personnel  of  24  officers  and  about 
650  men.  The  birds  used  by  the  army  are  known  to 
the  fancier  as  "homers"  and  are  really  not  carrier- 
pigeons  at  all,  the  latter  being  a  large,  ungainly  show- 
bird  that  cannot  fly  a  city  block.  But  our  allies  per- 
sist in  calling  homers  "carrier-pigeons,"  and  our  mili- 
tary authorities  have  adopted  the  term.  The  homer 
has  all  the  qualities  required  of  a  military  messenger. 
He  is  a  strong,  well-built,  racy-looking  bird,  possessed 
of  indomitable  courage.  His  most  characteristic  trait 
is,  of  course,  his  remarkable  ability  to  find  his  home 
when  released  at  great  distances  from  it.  This  power, 
which  has  been  developed  by  scientific  breeding  to  an 
almost  uncanny  degree,  is  the  asset  which  makes  the 
bird  of  enormous  value  to  the  army.  Though  scientists 
have  attempted  to  explain  the  homing  instinct,  they 


26        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

have  arrived  at  different  and  frequently  contradictory 
conclusions,  it  being  enough  to  know  that  it  is  an  in- 
stinct with  which  all  birds  are  endowed  to  a  greater 
or  less  degree,  and  which  has  been  developed  in  the 
homer  to  a  stage  where  it  is  limited  only  by  the  bird's 
physical  endurance.  Nature  has  equipped  the  pigeon 
with  numerous  air-sacs  adjoining  the  lungs,  in  which 
a  reserve  supply  of  warm  air  is  carried  and  suppUed 
to  the  lungs  as  needed  during  flight.  Over  the  eye 
is  a  transparent  lid,  called  a  "blinder,"  which  pro- 
tects the  eye  while  in  flight,  and  is  at  the  same  time 
transparent,  thus  providing  a  sort  of  natural  goggle. 
Well- trained  homers  have  frequently  flown  i,ooo  and 
even  1,500  miles,  while  pigeon-fanciers  think  no  more 
of  a  500-mile  flight  than  horsemen  do  of  a  mile  trotted 
in  2:30.  On  clear  days  a  homer  pigeon  will  fly  dis- 
tances up  to  300  miles  at  a  speed  close  to  a  mile 
a  minute,  though  longer  distances  are  usually  covered 
at  a  somewhat  lower  rate  of  speed,  the  birds  instinc- 
tively taking  advantage  of  the  favoring  air-currents 
and  increasing  or  decreasing  their  altitude  in  order 
to  obtain  the  benefit  of  them. 

Long  before  the  Great  War  it  was  discovered  that 
pigeons  would  "home"  to  movable  lofts  as  unerringly 
as  to  stationary  ones,  this  being  of  great  importance 
from  the  military  point  of  view  because  it  made  it  pos- 
sible to  move  the  cotes  up  to  within  a  few  miles  of  the 
firing-line.  It  also  made  it  comparatively  easy  to 
supply  the  advanced  posts  with  fresh  pigeons.  It  was 
found  that  a  week  or  ten  days  was  usually  sufficient  to 
acquaint  the  birds  with  the  new  location  of  the  loft 


THE   EARS   OF  THE   ARMY  27 

and  with  the  surrounding  country,  moves  of  twenty- 
five  miles  without  the  loss  of  any  birds  being  not  at  all 
uncommon.  Each  of  these  mobile  lofts  was  stocked 
with  seventy-five  young  birds,  six  to  eight  weeks  old, 
of  the  best  pedigreed  stock  obtainable.  Clasped  about 
the  leg  of  each  bird  was  a  seamless  aluminum  band 
bearing  a  serial  number,  the  year  of  birth,  and  the  let- 
ters ''U.  S.  A."  These  bands  are  put  on  soon  after 
birth  and  cannot  be  removed  except  by  destroying 
them.  As  the  birds  had  never  been  outside  a  loft,  it 
was  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  settle  them  in 
their  new  homes.  Their  early  training  was  devoted  to 
the  development  of  their  flying  strength  and  stamina 
and  to  the  habit  of  quick  ''trapping,"  by  which  is 
meant  the  entrance  of  the  bird  into  the  loft  immedi- 
ately upon  reaching  it,  a  pigeon  that  alights  on  the 
ground  or  roosts  on  the  roof  of  the  loft  being  considered 
most  imperfectly  trained.  They  soon  learn  to  trap 
without  hesitation,  a  flock  of  seventy-five  birds  entering 
a  loft  in  from  ten  to  twenty  seconds  after  pitching  on 
the  roof.  To  overcome  the  habit  of  loafing,  birds  are 
fed  in  the  loft  after  alighting  with  their  favorite  grain. 
After  a  month  or  two  of  this  preliminary  training  the 
birds  are  "tossed,"  to  use  the  phraseolog>'  of  the 
fancier,  at  increasing  distances  from  the  loft,  so  that 
by  the  time  they  are  five  or  six  months  old  they  are 
flying  from  fifty  to  seventy-five  miles  with  speed  and 
certainty.  They  are  then  ready  for  service  in  the 
trenches.  Not  all,  however,  are  assigned  to  the  in- 
fantry. Every  tank  crew  carries  a  complement  of 
pigeons,  men  from  the  Pigeon  Service  are  frequently 


28        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

attached  to  cavalry  units,  and  birds  have  been  used 
successfully  from  balloons  and  airplanes.  The  infan- 
tr>Tnan  carries  his  pigeons  in  a  light  wicker  hamper 
strapped  to  his  back,  each  bird  wearing  a  corselet  made 
of  crinoline  stiffened  with  whalebone  and  with  strings 
running  to  the  sides  of  the  basket,  thus  preventing  it 
from  being  tossed  about  and  injured. 

As  long  as  the  ordinary  means  of  communication 
are  working  satisfactorily,  birds  are  not  used.  But 
when  a  barrage  is  laid  down  and  the  telephone-wires 
are  destroyed,  resort  is  had  to  the  pigeons.  When  an 
advance-party  has  pushed  far  ahead  of  the  main  force 
it,  too,  relies  on  this  method  of  liaison.  In  short,  when 
every  other  method  of  liaison  has  failed  or  is  unavail- 
able, important  messages  are  intrusted  to  the  birds. 
The  messages  are  written  on  fine  tissue-paper,  folded 
into  a  small  wad,  and  inserted  in  the  aluminum  holder 
which  is  attached  to  the  leg  of  each  pigeon.  The  bird 
is  then  released,  and  in  spite  of  the  terrific  din  and 
confusion  of  battle,  in  spite  of  the  enemy  shotgun 
squads,  composed  of  expert  shots,  whose  duty  it  is  to 
pick  off  carrier-pigeons,  it  wings  its  way  through  shell 
and  gas  barrages  to  its  loft  in  the  rear  of  the  lines.  I 
might  mention  in  passing  that  though  birds  are  fre- 
quently killed  while  in  their  baskets  by  exploding 
shells,  and  others  die  from  long  confinement  without 
food  or  care  in  the  trenches,  those  that  survive  become 
accustomed  to  the  roar  of  cannon  and  never  suffer 
from  shell-shock.  On  reaching  his  loft  the  bird  hur- 
ries into  it  through  an  opening  which  permits  of  entry 
but  not  of  exit,  the  dropping  back  of  the  little  door 


THE   EARS   OF   THE   ARMY  29 

ringing  a  bell  which  announces  the  arrival  of  a  message 
from  the  front,  whereupon  eager  hands  strip  the  cylin- 
der from  the  leg  of  the  bird,  the  message  which  it  con- 
tains being  relayed  to  headquarters  by  telephone  or 
despatch-rider. 

The  pigeons  were  not  always  fortunate  enough, 
however,  to  pass  through  the  battle  area  unscathed, 
many  birds  having  succeeded  in  reaching  their  lofts 
with  their  messages  only  to  succumb  to  their  wounds. 
During  the  offensive  in  the  Argonne  an  American  pigeon 
reached  its  loft  with  the  leg  to  which  the  message  was 
attached  severed  and  dangling  by  the  ligaments,  the 
missile  that  severed  the  leg  having  also  passed  through 
the  breast-bone.  In  spite  of  these  injuries  and  the 
great  loss  of  blood  the  heroic  bird  flew  twenty-five  miles 
with  a  message  of  vital  importance.  I  am  glad  to  say 
that  the  pigeon  recovered  and  was  recommended  in 
due  form  for  the  D.  S.  C.  An  English  bird  was  struck 
by  a  piece  of  shrapnel  while  homeward  bound  with  a 
message.  Both  of  its  legs  were  broken  and  the  alu- 
minum message-holder  was  embedded  in  the  flesh  by 
the  force  of  the  bullet.  But  its  spirit  never  faltered. 
It  struggled  on  and  on,  blood  dripping  from  it  in  an 
ever-increasing  stream,  to  fall  dead  at  the  feet  of  the 
loft  attendants.  Another  bird  was  released  from  a 
seaplane  which  had  fallen  and  was  being  shelled  by  a 
German  destroyer.  It  rose  quickly  and  circled  once 
to  get  its  bearings.  Shots  resounded  from  the  deck 
of  the  destroyer,  the  bird  stopped  short  in  its  flight, 
and  a  flurry  of  falling  feathers  told  their  tale,  but, 
after  a  short  fall,  it  recovered  and  valiantly  struggled 


30        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

on.  Within  thirty  minutes  after  its  release  three 
British  destroyers,  white  waves  curling  from  their 
prows  and  clouds  of  smoke  belching  from  their  funnels, 
came  racing  toward  the  scene,  whereupon  the  German 
turned  and  fled  and  the  aviators  were  saved.  With 
wings  and  body  terribly  lacerated  the  plucky  bird  had 
flown  thirteen  miles  to  a  naval  air-station  and  given 
the  alarm.  Here  is  another  incident  in  which  a  feath- 
ered messenger  played  a  hero's  role.  A  detachment  of 
French  infantry  was  ordered  to  hold  a  certain  strategic 
position  at  all  costs,  thereby  affording  their  main  body 
time  to  retire  to  another  position.  The  Germans,  real- 
izing that  the  stubborn  little  band  of  Frenchmen  was 
balking  them  of  their  prey,  launched  attack  after 
attack,  until,  borne  down  by  sheer  weight  of  numbers, 
the  defenders  were  literally  engulfed  by  the  wave  of 
men  in  gray.  Just  as  all  that  remained  of  the  detach- 
ment were  making  their  last  stand,  a  blood-stained 
pigeon  fell  exhausted  in  a  French  loft  behind  the  lines. 
The  message  which  it  bore  read : 

"The  Boche  are  upon  us.  We  are  lost,  but  we 
have  done  good  work.  Have  the  artillery  open  on  our 
position." 

Little  has  been  said  about  the  work  of  pigeons  in 
this  country.  Over  a  hundred  lofts  were  established 
at  the  various  camps  and  cantonments,  the  thousands 
of  birds  which  they  housed  proving  of  no  inconsider- 
able value  in  the  training  of  the  troops  for  fighting 
overseas.  Everywhere  that  they  were  used  the  birds 
showed  a  dependability  which  won  for  them  the  en- 
thusiastic admiration  of  all  who  were  familiar  with 
their  work.     Indomitable  courage,  a  gameness  which 


THE   EARS   OF  THE   ARMY  31 

ends  only  with  death,  and  a  burning  love  of  home  are 
among  the  quahties  most  cherished  by  Americans,  and 
nothing  possesses  them  to  a  greater  degree  than  the 
army  carrier-pigeon. 

Though  the  Belgians  made  extensive  use  of  dogs 
for  hauling  machine-guns,  and  though  the  French 
used  them  to  a  certain  extent  for  liaison  work  and  the 
British  for  locating  the  wounded,  they  were  not  utilized 
by  the  American  forces  overseas.  A  considerable  num- 
ber of  dogs,  most  of  them  police-dogs  and  Airedales, 
were  trained  at  the  various  camps  and  cantonments  in 
this  country,  however,  and  had  the  war  continued  they 
would  undoubtedly  have  proved  of  real  service  in  cer- 
tain forms  of  work  in  France.  The  attitude  of  the 
American  soldier  toward  the  subject  of  dogs  is  best 
expressed  by  a  story  which  I  heard  in  France.  An 
American  officer,  lost  at  night  in  No  Man's  Land, 
sought  refuge  in  a  shell-hole.  He  found,  however,  that 
it  already  had  an  occupant,  an  American  doughboy — 
from  his  accent  evidently  a  product  of  the  Bowery — 
who,  it  appeared,  was  lost  like  himself.  In  the  periodic 
bursts  of  light  afforded  by  the  star-shells  the  officer 
noticed  that  the  man  had  strapped  to  his  back  what 
appeared  to  be  a  large  basket. 

"What  have  you  in  there?"  he  inquired  curiously. 

"Boids,  cap'n,  boids,"  the  soldier  answered  in  a 
hoarse  whisper,  adding  disgustedly:  "An'  that  ain't 
the  woist  of  it,  cap'n.  I  hear  they's  goin'  to  give  us 
dawgs !" 

Though  Americans  have  always  been  the  greatest 
photographers  in  the  world,  the  Yankee  abroad  being 


32        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

readily  distinguishable  by  his  ever-ready  kodak,  it  is  a 
rather  surprising  fact  that  it  needed  the  World  War  to 
convince  the  American  military  authorities  of  the  vital 
importance  to  the  army  of  the  camera.  Upon  our 
entry  into  the  war,  however,  the  War  Department,  fol- 
lo\\ing  the  example  of  the  European  armies,  established 
a  photographic  section,  with  a  personnel  of  forty-odd 
officers  and  nearly  800  men,  as  a  part  of  the  Signal 
Corps.  The  duty  of  this  section  was  to  take  pictures, 
both  still  and  motion,  of  every  phase  of  America's  par- 
ticipation in  the  war,  both  on  the  fighting  front  in 
Europe  and  in  the  training-camps  at  home;  for  the  in- 
formation of  the  intelligence  officers  of  the  A.  E.  F., 
for  the  guidance  of  the  artillery,  for  purposes  of  in- 
struction in  the  schools  and  cantonments,  for  propa- 
ganda use  at  home  and  in  foreign  countries,  and  for 
illustrating  the  official  history  of  the  great  conflict. 

The  photographic  section  was  divided  into  two 
branches,  land  and  air,  the  latter  being,  perhaps,  from 
a  military  standpoint,  the  more  important  of  the  two 
for  the  reason  that  airplanes  were  used  primarily  for 
reconnaissance  work  and  were,  when  equipped  with 
cameras,  literally  the  eyes  of  the  army.  The  airplane 
being  the  eye  of  the  army,  the  camera  may  be  said  to 
have  been  the  pupil  of  the  eye.  In  order  to  provide 
the  large  and  highly  trained  personnel  required  for 
this  service,  there  was  established  at  Rochester,  New 
York,  a  School  of  Aerial  Photography — the  largest  in 
the  world — where  candidates  received,  in  addition  to 
a  thorough  military  training,  a  course  of  instruction  in 
everything  relating  to  modern  photography,  from  the 


THE   EARS   OF   THE   ARMY  33 

manufacture  of  plates  and  films  through  the  selection 
and  use  of  lenses,  shutters,  and  light-filters,  to  the 
printing  of  the  picture  itself.  In  addition  to  becoming 
familiar  with  these  details  of  commercial  photography, 
they  were  instructed  in  all  the  special  phases  of  military 
photography,  such  as  map-plotting,  mosaics,  enlarge- 
ments, and  the  study  of  topography  from  a  negative 
made  many  thousands  of  feet  in  the  air.  As  in  that 
chapter  dealing  with  the  Air  Service  I  have  described 
in  considerable  detail  the  methods  and  instruments 
used  in  aerial  photography,  it  is  enough  to  say  here 
that  the  aerial  branch  of  our  Photographic  Service 
attained  such  a  degree  of  eflaciency  that,  in  the  closing 
months  of  the  war,  it  became  virtually  impossible  for 
the  Germans  to  dig  a  dozen  yards  of  new  trench,  to 
transfer  a  platoon,  to  change  the  position  of  a  machine- 
gun,  without  being  detected  by  the  all-seeing  eyes  of 
our  cameras. 

The  mother  school  for  land  photography  was 
located  at  Columbia  University,  in  New  York,  where 
the  students  received  the  same  thorough  training  which 
was  given  to  the  aerial  operators  at  Rochester,  with 
instruction  in  motion-picture  photography  added. 
The  students  at  this  school  were  the  pick  of  the  news- 
paper photographers  and  motion-picture  operators  of 
America.  Among  them  were  men  who  had  "snapped" 
presidents  and  potentates,  celebrities  and  notorieties, 
prize-fighters,  reformers,  murderers,  prelates,  politi- 
cians and  statesmen,  leaders  of  society.  Society  and 
near-society;  who  had  "filmed"  presidential  inaugura- 
tions, Ne^^'port    weddings,   railway    disasters,    yacht- 


34        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

races,  South  Sea  cannibals,  Mexican  revolutions,  and 
Heaven  knows  what  besides.  Their  courage  and  re- 
sourcefulness were  precisely  the  qualities  which  were 
required  of  army  photographers,  for  there  was  nowhere 
that  they  would  not  go,  nothing  that  they  would  not 
do,  and  the  more  danger  there  was  in  their  work  the 
more  it  appealed  to  them.  When  a  new  type  of  gun 
was  being  fired  for  the  first  time  and  the  gun  crew 
took  refuge  in  the  bomb-proofs  as  a  precaution  against 
accident,  the  army  movie-men  moved  their  machines 
up  close  in  the  hope  that  if  the  gun  exploded  they 
would  get  a  picture  of  the  explosion.  One  of  the  Signal 
Corps  operators,  Captain  Edward  N.  Cooper,  with  his 
assistant.  Sergeant  Adrian  Duff,  while  attached  to  the 
Twenty-Sixth  Division,  crawled  out  into  No  Man's 
Land  just  before  an  attack  was  scheduled  to  take  place, 
and,  though  exposed  to  both  German  and  American 
fire,  set  up  their  machine  in  order  that  the  people  at 
home,  seated  comfortably  in  motion-picture  theatres, 
might  actually  see  the  boys  going  "over  the  top." 
On  another  occasion  this  same  young  officer  became 
separated  from  the  troops  to  which  he  was  attached 
and  found  himself  under  the  fire  of  a  German  machine- 
gun,  but  in  spite  of  the  hail  of  bullets  he  stuck  to 
his  work,  made  his  pictures,  and  returned  to  the  Amer- 
ican lines  herding  in  front  of  him  a  group  of  Germans 
whom  he  had  captured  single-handed  at  the  point 
of  an  empty  revolver.  A  camera-man  whom  the  French 
Government  detailed  to  accompany  me  along  the 
Western  Front  in  191 6  was  seriously  wounded  by  a 
German  shell  just  as  we  were  leaving  Verdun.     His 


Photograph  by  Signal  Corps,  U.  S.  A. 
AN  OFFICER  OF  THE  SIGNAL  CORPS  OPERATING  A  TELEPHONE  AT  THE  FRONT. 

This  instrument  was  so  compact  that  it  could  be  carried  as  part  of  the  cquiiiment  of  a  soldier  and 
quiciily  put  into  operation. 


THE   EARS   OF  THE   ARMY  35 

assistant  helped  me  to  give  first  aid  to  his  chief  and 
then,  though  the  road  was  being  heavily  bombarded, 
coolly  set  up  his  machine  and  turned  the  crank  while 
the  wounded  man  was  being  lifted  into  an  ambulance. 
It  is  a  striking  commentary  on  the  scepticism  of  Amer- 
ican audiences  that,  when  I  showed  that  picture  in 
the  United  States,  fully  half  of  the  people  who  saw  it 
insisted  that  it  had  been  faked.  Another  officer  of 
the  photographic  section  who,  before  our  entry  into 
the  war,  as  the  representative  of  a  Chicago  newspaper 
had  accompanied  the  German  Armies  during  the  in- 
vasion of  Poland,  was  present  at  the  capture  of  War- 
saw. When  the  Kaiser  reviewed  the  troops  after  his 
triumphal  entry  into  the  captured  city,  the  American 
pushed  his  way  through  the  cordon  of  soldiers  and 
police  agents  which  surrounded  the  imperial  motor- 
car, set  up  his  machine  within  six  feet  of  the  astonished 
Emperor,  and  proceeded  to  take  a  "close-up"  of  the 
All  Highest,  who  was  so  amused  by  the  efTrontery 
of  the  performance  that  he  insisted  on  shaking  the 
photographer's  hand ! 

Motion-pictures  were  used  in  the  training  of 
troops  far  more  generally  than  the  public  realized.  A 
series  of  pictures  taken  at  the  Military  Academy  at 
West  Point  and  exhibited  at  every  camp  and  canton- 
ment in  the  United  States  did  more  in  a  few  hours 
to  acquaint  the  troops  with  military  etiquette  and 
the  evolutions  of  the  squad,  the  platoon,  and  the  com- 
pany than  any  number  of  drills  and  lectures  could 
have  done.  "Animated  drawings,"  as  they  are  called 
— like  those  of  Mutt  and  Jeff  and  the  Katzenjammer 


36        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

Kids — were  made  under  the  direction  of  the  Signal 
Corps  for  the  purpose  of  familiarizing  the  men  with 
the  mechanism  of  the  service  rifle,  the  automatic  pistol, 
and  the  various  types  of  machine-guns.  By  running 
these  pictures  slowly,  every  stage  of  the  operation 
of  loading  and  firing  was  made  clear,  from  the  inser- 
tion of  the  cartridge  into  the  clip  or  belt  to  the  bullet 
leaving  the  muzzle.  But  the  greatest  value  of  the 
motion-picture,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  was  in  keep- 
ing up  the  morale  of  the  American  people  by  combat- 
ing the  insidious  and  undeniably  clever  propaganda 
which  was  carried  on  in  this  country  by  the  Germans. 
Enemy  agents  spread  reports  that  the  drafted  troops 
were  being  ill-treated  in  the  camps,  that  they  lived 
in  wretched  quarters,  were  poorly  fed,  and  suffered 
from  lack  of  proper  clothing.  To  answer  these  charges 
a  score  of  movie-men  were  despatched  to  the  various 
camps,  the  pictures  which  they  took  and  which  were 
exhibited  throughout  the  country  showing  the  clean 
and  comfortable  barracks,  the  men  seated  at  their 
bountiful  and  appetizing  meals  in  the  mess-halls,  the 
football  and  baseball  games,  the  camp  theatres,  and 
the  other  features  of  cantonment  life,  thus  providing 
a  convincing  refutation  of  the  German  insinuations. 
Parents  who  had  heard  the  widely  circulated  tales  of 
the  imsanitary  and  immoral  conditions  to  which  their 
boys  were  exposed  in  France  could  go  to  their  local 
motion-picture  houses  and  see  for  themselves  the  clean 
dormitories,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Knights  of  Columbus 
huts,  the  social  gatherings,  the  splendidly  equipped 
hospitals,  incidents  of  life  in  the  back  areas  and  in 


THE   EARS   OF   THE   ARMY  37 

the  trenches,  and  not  infrequently  the  faces  of  their 
loved  ones  themselves,  sun-bronzed  and  happy,  wear- 
ing "the  smile  that  won't  come  off."  If  the  photo- 
graphic section  of  the  army  had  accomplished  nothing 
else,  its  existence  would  have  been  justified  a  thousand 
times  over  by  the  service  which  it  performed  in  fight- 
ing the  propaganda  of  the  Hun  and  in  bringing  cheer 
and  comfort  to  the  parents,  wives,  and  sweethearts 
whom  the  boys  had  left  behind  them. 

As  a  result  of  the  researches  and  experiments 
which  it  carried  on  during  the  war,  the  Signal  Corps 
has,  in  addition  to  its  countless  other  achievements, 
produced  several  devices  which  are  of  such  an  astound- 
ing nature  as  to  strain  almost  to  the  breaking-point 
the  credulity  of  the  layman.  I  am  not  permitting 
myself  to  indulge  in  the  slightest  exaggeration  when  I 
assert  that  these  devices  place  in  the  hands  of  the 
United  States  weapons  which  would  render  this  coun- 
try wellnigh  invulnerable  in  the  event  of  our  ever  be- 
coming involved  in  another  war.  But — and  herein  lies 
their  greatest  significance  and  interest — they  are,  be- 
yond all  question,  the  most  important  inventions,  so 
far  as  their  effect  on  the  peaceful  interests  of  the  na- 
tion are  concerned,  which  have  been  produced  since 
Morse  invented  the  telegraph,  Bell  perfected  the  tele- 
phone, and  Marconi  amazed  us  with  the  wireless. 
Imagine  the  value  of  a  device  which  permits  of  a  con- 
versation being  carried  on  between  a  person  on  the 
ground  and  an  aviator  in  the  clouds  as  easily  as  though 
they  were  seated  opposite  each  other  at  a  dinner-table  ! 


38        THE  ARMY   BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

Such  is  the  radiotelephone,  which  I  have  described  in 
detail  in  the  chapter  on  the  Air  Service  but  which  was 
suggested  and  brought  to  a  state  of  perfection  by  of- 
ficers of  the  Signal  Corps.  Conceive,  if  you  can,  of 
another  device  which  permits  of  nineteen  separate  and 
distinct  telephone  and  telegraph  messages  being  trans- 
mitted simultaneously  over  a  single  copper  wire! 
Picture  the  advance  in  world-communication  made 
possible  by  the  discovery,  made  by  General  Squier, 
the  Chief  Signal  Officer  of  the  Army,  that  growing 
trees  can  be  used  as  natural  antennae  for  both  sending 
and  receiving  radio  messages !  And,  as  a  climax  to 
this  amazing  list  of  achievements,  let  your  imagination 
attempt  to  grasp  the  military  and  commercial  signif- 
icance of  a  device  for  the  sending  over  telegraph  wires 
or  cables  of  cipher  messages  which,  though  they  can 
defy  any  system  of  deciphering  known  to  science,  ap- 
pear in  plain  language  at  the  other  end !  You  may 
think,  perhaps,  that  I  am  overenthusiastic ;  that  I  have 
used  too  many  adjectives  and  exclamation-marks. 
But  suppose  that  I  tell  you  something  about  these 
inventions.  Then,  unless  I  am  greatly  mistaken,  you 
will  be  guilty  of  adjectives  and  exclamations  yourself. 
Owing  to  the  difficulty  of  constructing  in  France 
enough  telegraph  and  telephone  lines  to  meet  the  con- 
stantly increasing  requirements  of  the  American  Ex- 
peditionary Forces,  as  well  as  to  relieve  the  great  con- 
gestion which  prevailed  on  all  of  the  existing  lines, 
the  scientists  of  the  Signal  Corps  turned  their  atten- 
tion early  in  the  war  to  the  possibility  of  sending 
several  messages  simultaneously  over  a  single  wire. 


THE   EARS   OF  THE   ARMY  39 

Without  entering  into  the  details  of  the  long  series 
of  experiments  which  were  conducted  by  the  Signal 
Corps,  in  conjunction  with  the  American  Telephone 
and  Telegraph  Company  at  Camp  Alfred  Vail,  New 
Jersey,  or  attempting  to  describe  in  terms  which  would 
be  intelligible  to  the  non-technical  reader  the  device 
which  was  finally  perfected,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
result  is  accomplished  through  the  application  of  radio, 
the  wire  serving  as  a  guide  for  the  radio  currents  and 
conducting  them  with  a  minimum  of  power  and  with 
a  minimum  of  interference  with  other  radio  communi- 
cations. This  device  has  now  been  brought  to  such 
a  state  of  perfection  that  eight  telegraph  messages 
and  eleven  telephone  messages  can  be  carried  over  a 
single  wire  at  the  same  time,  the  Morse  messages  being 
transmitted  by  means  of  the  multiplex  telegraph  ap- 
paratus— a  system  which  was  discovered  as  early  as 
1 9 10  and  is  now  in  general  use  by  the  large  telegraph 
companies — while  the  telephone  conversations  are 
guided  by  wireless  waves,  which  serve  as  carriers  for 
the  voice  currents.  By  placing  on  ordinary  telegraph- 
wires  wireless  waves  of  very  short  length  or  of  very 
great  frequency,  officers  of  the  Signal  Corps  have  suc- 
cessfully conversed  over  a  line  from  Washington  to 
Baltimore  which  was  being  used  at  the  same  time  for 
the  transmission  of  duplex  telegraph  messages.  Per- 
haps the  most  remarkable  feature  of  the  performance 
was  its  extreme  simplicity,  the  feat  being  accomplished 
merely  by  placing  on  the  line,  through  proper  con- 
necting condensers,  a  pair  of  radiotelephone  sets  such 
as  are  used  for  communicating  between  ground-stations 


40        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

and  airplanes.  Whereas  it  was  believed,  until  very 
recently,  that  it  was  impracticable  to  hold  more  than 
four  wired-wireless  conversations  over  one  wire  or 
one  pair  of  wires,  in  addition  to  whatever  ordinary 
telephone  or  telegraph  conversation  might  be  on  that 
wire,  the  Signal  Corps  has  now  demonstrated  that  it 
is  not  only  possible  but  entirely  practicable  to  hold 
ten  or  more  extra  telephone  conversations  without 
their  interfering  with  each  other.  Had  this  system 
been  perfected  while  the  war  was  in  progress  it  would 
have  meant  that  ten  telephone  and  two  or  more  tele- 
graph conversations  could  have  been  carried  on  simul- 
taneously with  a  point  served  only  by  a  single  wire. 
In  other  words,  by  the  application  of  this  system  one 
w^e  will  take  the  place  of  ten. 

Another  phase  of  science  uncovered  by  the  Signal 
Corps  which  figuratively  makes  the  mind  of  the  lay- 
man stand  still  and  gasp  is  the  discovery,  due  to  the 
experiments  of  the  Chief  Signal  Officer,  General  Squier, 
that  trees  can  be  used  as  instruments  in  the  receipt 
and  transmission  of  electrical  messages,  both  telegraph 
and  telephone,  both  by  wire  and  wireless.  Think  of 
it,  my  friends  !  The  commonplace  tree  possesses  those 
very  qualities  that  men  have  spent  centuries  of  effort 
to  embody  in  a  frail  spider's  web  of  wire  ! 

"From  the  moment  an  acorn  is  planted  in  fertile 
soil,"  to  quote  the  words  of  General  Squier  himself,  "it 
becomes  a  'detector'  and  a  'receiver'  of  electromag- 
netic waves,  and  the  marvellous  properties  of  this  re- 
ceiver, through  agencies  at  present  entirely  unknown 
to  us,  are  such  as  to  vitalize  the  acorn  and  to  produce 


THE  EARS   OF  THE  ARAIY  41 

in  time  the  giant  oak.  In  the  power  of  multiplying 
plant-cells  it  may,  indeed,  be  called  an  incomparable 
'amplifier.'  From  this  angle  of  view  we  may  consider 
that  trees  have  been  pieces  of  electrical  apparatus 
from  their  beginning,  and  with  their  manifold  chains 
of  living  cells  are  absorbers,  conductors,  and  radiators 
of  the  long  electromagnetic  waves  as  used  in  the  radio 
art.  For  our  present  purpose  we  may  consider,  there- 
fore, a  growing  tree  as  a  highly  organized  piece  of  liv- 
ing earth,  to  be  used  in  the  same  manner  as  we  now 
use  the  earth  as  a  universal  conductor  for  telephony 
and  telegraphy  and  other  electrical  purposes." 

Not  only  have  telephone  conversations,  in  which 
the  voice  is  transmitted  just  as  clearly  as  by  the  ordi- 
nary metallic  circuit  telephone,  been  carried  on  from 
tree  to  tree,  up  to  a  distance  of  three  miles,  in  the  out- 
skirts of  Washington,  but  while  the  war  was  still  in 
progress  the  signal  officers,  using  tree- tops  as  antennae, 
read  messages  from  ships  at  sea,  from  aviators  in  the 
sky,  and  from  the  great  radio-stations  in  South  America 
and  Europe.  As  a  result  of  this  discovery,  the  lofty 
and  costly  towers  which  are  now  used  for  the  sending 
and  receipt  of  radio  messages  will  no  longer  be  a  neces- 
sity. All  that  will  be  necessary  is  to  drive  a  spike  in  a 
tree,  attach  a  wire  to  the  spike,  and  run  the  wire  to  a 
radio  apparatus,  whereupon  messages  can  be  received 
and  sent,  the  distance  covered  depending  upon  the 
power  of  the  instrument.  The  tree  telegraph  has  been 
dubbed  by  General  Squier  a  "floragraph"  and  the  tree 
telephone  a  "floraphone,"  while  the  messages  trans- 
mitted over  this  arboreal  system  are  to  be  known  as 


42        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

''floragrams."  Though  this  discovery  will  in  all  like- 
lihood result  in  an  amazing  expansion  of  the  world's 
system  of  communication,  and  though  it  will  give 
radio-towers,  thousands  of  them,  in  fact,  to  every  vil- 
lage and  to  every  farm,  it  does  not  necessarily  mean 
that  every  man  who  possesses  a  vine  and  fig-tree  will 
be  able  to  sit  on  his  front  porch  and  gossip  with  his 
neighbors. 

During  the  war  the  offices  of  the  Chief  Signal 
Officer  were  literally  besieged  by  persons  who  claimed 
to  have  invented  various  systems  of  message  trans- 
mission which  could  not  be  tapped,  or  which,  if  they 
were  tapped,  could  not  be  understood.  It  was  per- 
fectly well  known  to  us,  of  course,  that  the  German 
Listening-in  Service,  particularly  in  the  front-line 
trenches,  was  well  organized  and  extremely  efficient, 
and  that  telephone  and  buzzer  conversations  held  over 
our  wires  were  frequently  intercepted.  It  was  known, 
moreover,  that  Germany  had  spies,  both  in  France  and 
the  United  States,  whose  sole  duty  it  was  to  tap  the 
governmental  telephone  and  telegraph  systems  for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  military  information.  Scores  of 
devices  designed  to  secure  the  inviolability  of  the 
vitally  important  messages  which  were  constantly 
passing  over  the  wires  were  submitted  to  the  Signal 
Corps.  Anxious  as  they  were  to  obtain  a  system  of 
message  transmission  which  could  jeer  at  the  efforts 
of  the  enemy's  spies,  the  experts  of  the  Signal  Corps 
steadily  maintained  that  such  a  thing  did  not  exist, 
for,  as  they  said  with  truth,  if  an  instrument  could  be 
devised  which  could  transmit  and  decode  a  message, 


THE  EARS  OF  THE  ARMY  43 

there  was  no  reason  why  the  Germans  could  not  in 
time  manufacture  one  like  it,  put  it  on  the  line,  and 
thus  obtain  the  information  desired. 

One  of  the  inventors  who  approached  the  Signal 
Corps  asserted  that,  though  he  did  not  claim  to  have 
a  device  which  would  render  a  message  indecipherable, 
he  had  a  system  which  made  it  impossible  for  an  enemy 
agent  to  tap  the  wire  over  which  messages  were  being 
transmitted  without  the  sender  and  receiver  being  in- 
stantly notified  that  some  one  was  eavesdropping 
upon  them,  whereupon  their  conversation  would,  of 
course,  cease.  "Prove  it  to  us,"  said  the  Signal  Corps, 
and  provided  the  inventor  with  an  opportunity  to 
demonstrate  his  system  over  a  miniature  line.  With- 
out the  slightest  difficulty  the  military  experts  tapped 
the  line  and,  with  the  aid  of  a  stenographer,  recorded 
ever}-'  message  which  was  sent  over  it,  the  quantity  of 
energy  which  they  withdrew  for  the  purpose  being  so 
minute  that  the  delicate  detectors  failed  to  record  the 
fact  that  the  line  had  been  tampered  with. 

Another  system  had  as  its  basic  principle  the 
breaking  up  of  the  groups  of  Morse  dots  and  dashes 
which  represented  the  letters  of  the  message,  and  rout- 
ing these  mangled  fragments  over  widely  separated 
wires  to  the  recei\dng-station,  where  they  were  automat- 
ically joined  together  again  so  as  to  form  the  message 
as  originally  sent.  If,  for  example,  it  was  desired  to 
send  from  Hoboken  to  Washington  the  message  "  Trans- 
port Leviathan  sails  June  twenty-fifth,''^  it  was  proposed 
to  make  use  of  two  lines,  one  running,  let  us  say,  through 
Harrisburg,  the  other  via  Wilmington.     The  message 


44        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

sent  over  the  Harrisburg  wire  would  be  broken  up 
something  after  this  fashion:  " t-a-s-o-t-e-i-t-a-s-i-s-u-e- 
w-n-y-i-t,"  while  the  portion  going  by  way  of  Wilming- 
ton would  read:  "r-n-p-r-1-v-a-h-n-a-l-j-n-t-e-t-f-f-h." 
To  create  still  further  confusion  in  the  mind  of  any  one 
who  might  succeed  in  intercepting  one  of  these  sets  of 
fragments,  it  was  proposed  to  superimpose  a  "camou- 
flage" message  upon  the  disconnected  letters,  the  char- 
acters of  the  camouflage  message  to  occupy  the  spaces 
between  the  characters  of  the  real  message.  By  an 
exceedingly  ingenious  device,  these  apparently  inex- 
tricably intermixed  and  unrelated  letters  were  auto- 
matically sorted  out  at  the  receiving-station  and  pieced 
together,  like  a  jigsaw  puzzle,  so  that  the  message 
appeared  precisely  as  it  was  sent.  Going  a  step  fur- 
ther, the  inventors  of  this  system  proposed  by  the 
same  means  to  install  a  system  of  telephone  communi- 
cation whereby  the  spoken  words  would  be  broken  up 
just  as  the  Morse  characters  were  divided,  certain 
sounds  in  each  word  going  over  one  wire  and  the  re- 
maining sounds  over  another,  to  be  joined  together  at 
the  receiving-station  into  a  perfectly  intelligible  con- 
versation. Here  again  a  wholly  separate  and  extrane- 
ous conversation  was  superimposed  over  the  sounds 
proceeding  by  each  route,  so  that  were  either  of  the 
lines  tapped  the  listener-in  would  be  rewarded  for  his 
pains  by  hearing  a  torrent  of  sound  which  would  con- 
vince him  that  he  was  listening  to  a  combination  of 
Choctaw,  Chinese,  the  ravings  of  John  McCullough, 
and  the  symptoms  of  a  severe  cold.  Notwithstanding 
the  undeniable  ingenuity  of  this  system,   the  Signal 


THE  EARS  OF  THE   ARMY  45 

Corps  experts  demonstrated,  to  the  unconcealed  as- 
tonishment of  the  inventors,  that  they  could  overhear 
and  understand  these  crazy-quilt  conversations  as 
readily  as  though  they  were  being  held  across  a 
dinner-table  in  plain  English. 

Early  in  1918,  however,  the  American  Telephone 
and  Telegraph  Company,  becoming  interested  in  the 
solution  of  this  apparently  insoluble  problem,  produced 
a  device  whereby  a  message  could  be  transmitted  over 
a  wire  in  such  a  form  that  it  was  absolutely  indecipher- 
able to  any  one  save  the  person  for  whom  it  was  in- 
tended. As  originally  developed,  this  system  was  un- 
able to  do  all  that  was  claimed  for  it,  but,  thanks  to  the 
co-operation  of  the  Signal  Corps,  there  was  finally 
produced  an  electrical  device  which  will  transform  an 
ordinary  message  into  cipher,  transmit  it  with  absolute 
secrecy,  and  decode  it  at  the  other  end — all  at  the  rate 
of  from  forty  to  seventy  words  a  minute.  This  may 
be  said  to  be  the  only  cipher  in  existence  which  is  abso- 
lutely indecipherable  and  at  the  same  time  practicable. 
As  universal  peace  is  not  yet  within  sight,  even  with 
the  aid  of  a  telescope,  and  as  this  invention  would  prove 
of  incalculable  value  to  the  United  States  in  the  event 
of  our  again  becoming  involved  in  war,  it  is  obviously 
out  of  the  question  to  discuss  the  principle  on  which 
it  is  based,  much  less  the  details  of  its  construction 
and  operation.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  this  nation 
is  now  the  possessor  of  a  system  of  code  transmission 
which  can  defy  all  the  experts  in  the  world,  a  message 
sent  by  its  means  being  absolutely  indecipherable  to 
the  inventor  himself. 


46        THE   ARMY   BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

Though  before  the  signing  of  the  Armistice  this 
device  was  operating  between  several  points  in  the 
United  States  with  complete  satisfaction,  the  apparatus 
could  not  be  manufactured  in  time  to  permit  of  its  use 
overseas  before  the  end  of  the  war.  The  engineers  of 
the  Signal  Corps  assert  that  this  device  will  eventually 
be  perfected  to  a  degree  of  commercial  practicability 
which  will  make  it  possible  to  transmit  cipher  messages 
over  cables  as  well  as  land  lines  without  the  necessity 
of  manual  transmission  and  without  the  use  of  a  re- 
corder. As  the  machine  codes  and  decodes  messages 
automatically,  the  large  code-room  forces  which  were 
used  in  Washington  during  the  war,  and  which  are 
employed  by  many  of  the  great  banking  and  commer- 
cial institutions,  would  no  longer  be  required,  thus 
doing  away  entirely  with  the  labor  at  present  involved 
in  coding  and  decoding  messages  and  cutting  down  the 
time  required  for  their  transmission  by  many  hours. 


II 

"ESSAYONS" 

IF,  the  next  time  you  meet  an  officer  of  Engineers, 
you  will  observe  his  uniform  closely,  you  will  per- 
ceive that  the  buttons  of  his  tunic,  instead  of  being 
embossed  with  the  arms  of  the  United  States,  like  all 
other  branches  of  the  service,  bear  a  device  consisting 
of  an  eagle,  a  castle,  a  rising  sun,  and  the  motto  "£^- 
sayons.''^  Like  the  bow  of  black  velvet,  called  a 
"flash,"  which  the  Royal  Welsh  Fusiliers  have  sewn 
at  the  back  of  their  collars  to  commemorate  the  fact 
that  they  were  the  last  regiment  in  the  British  Army 
to  wear  the  pigtail,  so  the  buttons  of  the  Engineers 
serve  to  remind  their  wearers  that  the  famous  organi- 
zation is  as  old  as  the  nation,  tracing  its  history  back 
to  the  Corps  of  Artillerists  and  Engineers  of  the  Con- 
tinental Army. 

^^ Essayons^^ — "Let  us  try."  One  likes  the  quiet 
confidence  of  the  motto. 

"Can  you  make  roads  for  my  guns  through  the 
swamps  of  the  Wilderness?"  asked  Grant. 

"Let  us  try,"  replied  the  Engineers — and  the 
roads  were  built. 

"Can  you  build  docks  for  disembarking  ten  thou- 
sand men  a  day  and  railways  to  carry  those  men  to 
the  front?"  asked  Pershing. 

"Let  us  try,"  the  Engineers  responded — and  al- 

47 


48        THE  ARMY   BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

most  overnight  miles  of  docks  and  networks  of  rails 
appeared  as  though  at  the  wave  of  a  magician's  wand. 

"  Can  you  locate  the  enemy's  guns  by  their  sound  ? 
Can  you  keep  our  troops  supplied  with  water?  Can 
you  print  maps  ?  Can  you  make  dugouts  ?  Can  you 
operate  search-lights?  Can  you  dredge  harbors  for 
the  entrance  of  our  transports  ?  Can  you  build  high- 
ways and  keep  them  in  repair?  Can  you  quarry  the 
stone  for  those  highways  ?  Can  you  cut  a  million  feet 
of  lumber  a  day?  Can  you  design  better  t}^es  of 
armored  cars,  sound-detectors,  mobile  cranes,  portable 
sawmills,  listening  apparatus,  mapping  cameras,  steel 
bridges,  barbed-wire  entanglements,  than  any  in  exist- 
ence?   And,  if  the  necessity  arises,  can  you  fight?" 

" Essayons,^'  answered  the  Engineers — whereupon 
all  these  things  were  done. 

Whenever  the  army  has  had  work  to  be  done 
which  no  one  else  knew  how  to  do,  they  have  sent  for 
the  Engineers.  Who  designed,  built,  and  operated 
our  tanks  before  the  organization  of  the  Tank  Corps? 
The  Engineers.  Who  organized  the  Gas  and  Flame 
Regiment?  The  Engineers.  The  Camouflage  Corps? 
The  Engineers,  of  course.  Who  did  the  mining,  quarry- 
ing, timber-cutting,  well-driving,  dock,  bridge,  road, 
railway,  and  camp  building  for  our  armies  overseas? 
Again,  the  Engineers.  Indeed,  I  doubt  if  any  organi- 
zation of  any  army  in  the  Great  War  can  show  such  a 
record  of  varied  activities  and  successful  accomplish- 
ments as  the  Corps  of  Engineers.  One  can  say  of  the 
American  Engineer,  as  Kipling  said  of  the  British 
Marine : 


''ESSAYONS"  49 

"There  isn't  a  job  on  the  top  o'  the  earth  the  beggar  don't  know 

nor  do — 
You  can  leave  'im  at  night  on  a  bald  man's  'ead  to  paddle  'is 

own  canoe; 

They  think  for  'emselves,  an'  they  steal  for  'emselves,  an'  they 

never  ask  what's  to  do, 
But  they're  camped  an'  fed,  an'  they're  up  an'  fed,  before  our 

bugle's  blew." 

The  immense  importance  attached  to  the  work  of 
the  Engineers  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  fact  that, 
whereas  the  army  was  increased  to  19K  times  its  pre- 
war size,  the  enormous  problems  of  field  fortification, 
construction,  and  transportation,  both  with  and  be- 
hind the  fighting  forces,  as  well  as  the  direction  of 
many  entirely  new  phases  of  warfare,  necessitated  an 
increase  of  the  Corps  of  Engineers  to  13  iK  times  its 
strength  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  Prior  to  July, 
1 91 6,  the  corps  consisted  of  only  three  battalions,  with 
a  total  strength  of  not  over  1,900  men,  but  when  the 
Armistice  was  signed  there  had  been  organized,  or 
were  in  process  of  organization,  500  Engineer  units, 
with  a  strength  of  some  312,000  men,  or  more  than 
10  per  cent  of  the  entire  army.  „.,--■ 

Now  it  must  be  kept  in  mind  that  in  the  original 
corps  of  pre-war  days  the  men  were  trained  only  as 
sappers  and  not  in  the  countless  specialist  branches 
which  were  developed  by  the  great  conflict.  The  fun- 
damental use  of  sapper  troops  is,  theoretically,  at  least, 
the  supervision  of  technical  work  during  tactical  opera- 
tions. One  regiment  of  sappers  is  normally  assigned 
to  each  division,  is  under  the  immediate  command  of 


50        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

the  divisional  commander,  and  operates  as  directed 
by  him.  To  this  regiment  is  given  the  work  of  organ- 
izing positions  for  defense,  which  includes  the  con- 
struction of  trenches,  gun-positions,  ammunition- 
dumps,  and  dugouts,  the  repair  and  maintenance  of 
roads  in  the  divisional  area,  the  construction  of  shelters 
where  required,  and  the  general  direction  of  the  work 
necessary  to  keep  open  the  lines  of  communication 
and  supply.  In  open  warfare  it  is  customary  for  the 
divisional  commander  to  hold  his  sapper  regiment 
in  reserve  to  be  used  for  applying  the  decisive  pressure 
or  resistance  at  the  moment  when  it  is  most  needed. 
When  going  forward  with  the  infantry,  sapper  troops 
usually  have  a  definite  technical  mission,  such  as  the 
organization  of  captured  ground,  the  destruction  of 
obstacles  and  the  bridging  of  streams.  During  a  re- 
treat they  are  attached  to  the  rear-guard,  being  charged 
with  the  demolition  of  bridges,  the  obstruction  of  roads, 
and  the  cutting  of  railway  communications.  Though 
the  ranks  of  the  Engineers  were  filled,  for  the  most 
part,  with  men  who  were  experts  and  specialists  in 
certain  trades  and  professions,  they  were  time  after 
time  thrown  into  the  line  as  combat  troops,  fighting 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  infantry.  On  more  than 
one  occasion  they  showed  that,  destitute  of  combat 
training  though  many  of  them  were,  they  could  handle 
a  rifle  or  a  machine-gun  as  well  as  an  axe  or  a  spade. 
At  Cambrai  the  nth  (railway)  Engineers,  caught  in 
the  German  counter-push,  offered  a  stubborn  and 
heroic  resistance  against  overwhelming  numbers.  At 
Amiens  another  railway  regiment,  the  nth  Engineers, 


"ESSAYONS"  51 

formed  a  part  of  the  little  force  with  which  General 
Sandeman  Carey  blocked  the  gap  in  the  British  line 
and  thereby  prevented  the  Germans  from  breaking 
through  to  the  Channel  ports.  For  its  behavior  on 
that  occasion  the  regiment  was  cited  by  the  British 
and  its  commander  was  decorated.  Perhaps  you  were 
not  aware  that  two  companies  of  Engineers  fought 
alongside  the  Marines  in  the  Bois  de  Belleau.  And, 
when  the  gray  hordes  of  Hindenburg  were  reeling  back 
from  the  Marne,  a  report  from  the  Rainbow  Division 
ended:  "Our  advance  troops,  the  117th  Engineers, 
are  pressing  the  enemy  closely."  But  the  story  that 
will  live  longest  in  the  annals  of  the  famous  corps  is 
that  of  the  sergeant  of  the  railway  regiment  at  Cam- 
brai,  who,  surrounded  by  the  enemy,  refused  to  sur- 
render and  defended  himself  with  his  only  weapon,  a 
crowbar.  When  they  found  him,  hours  later,  the  crow- 
bar was  still  clutched  in  his  dead  hand.  About  him, 
with  crushed  skulls,  lay  seven  Germans. 

The  innumerable  new  devices  produced  by  the 
Great  War,  however,  required  for  their  operation  great 
numbers  of  specially  trained  men,  so  that  the  Corps  of 
Engineers,  from  an  organization  consisting  solely  of 
sapper  troops,  found  itself  called  upon  to  do  more  and 
more  work  in  almost  every  branch  of  engineering.  To 
meet  these  demands  men  were  accordingly  trained  as 
specialists  and  assigned  to  specialist  regiments  and 
battalions,  so  that,  when  the  war  ended,  the  Corps  of 
Engineers  consisted  of  camouflage,  car-repair,  crane- 
operator,  dock-construction,  dredging,  electrical  and 
mechanical,    forestry,    general-construction,   highway, 


52        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

inland-watenvay,  light-railway  construction,  shop,  and 
operation,  locomotive-repair,  military-mapping,  min- 
ing, pontoon  park  and  train,  quarry,  railway-trans- 
portation, road,  sapper,  search-light  (including  anti- 
aircraft), sound -and -flash -ranging,  standard -gauge 
railway-construction,  operation,  shop  and  maintenance- 
of-way,  supply,  surveying  and  printing,  trades  and 
storekeepers,  transportation  and  water-supply  troops, 
organized  as  needed  into  companies,  battalions,  or 
regiments. 

Now  it  was  realized,  from  the  very  beginning,  that 
the  success  of  our  armies  in  France  would  depend  upon 
transportation.  And,  thanks  to  the  threats  of  Pancho 
Villa,  we  had  at  least  the  framework  of  a  transporta- 
tion organization,  for  when  it  became  necessary  to 
send  troops  to  the  Mexican  border  in  1916,  the  War 
Department  had  organized  a  transportation  service  of 
sorts  and  had  placed  Samuel  M.  Felton,  president  of 
the  Chicago  Great  Western  Railway,  at  the  head  of  it. 
Thus  it  came  about  that  upon  our  entrance  into  the 
Great  War  there  devolved  upon  Mr.  Felton  and  his 
staff  the  gigantic  task  of  obtaining  in  the  United  States 
and  shipping  to  Europe  the  enormous  quantity  of 
transportation  equipment  and  suppHes  required  for 
the  use  of  our  forces  overseas.  In  order  to  ascertain 
just  what  was  required  in  equipment  and  supplies,  a 
commission,  headed  by  Colonel  William  Barclay  Par- 
sons, president  of  the  American  Society  of  Civil  En- 
gineers, and  Colonel  (then  Major)  W.  J.  Wilgus,  for- 
merly vice-president  of  the  New  York  Central  system, 
was  sent  to  Europe  within  less  than  thirty  days  after 


"ESSAYONS"  53 

the  declaration  of  war.  Upon  the  completion  of  its 
preliminary  survey  of  the  situation  the  commission 
dispersed,  leaving  Colonel  Wilgus  as  the  sole  nucleus 
of  the  American  Transportation  Service  in  France, 
with  Captain  L.  A.  Jenney,  formerly  chief  draftsman 
of  the  New  York  Central,  as  his  assistant.  Sitting 
on  soap-boxes  in  an  office  in  the  Boulevard  Haussman 
in  Paris,  with  packing-cases  for  desks,  these  two  officers 
outlined  the  general  policy  with  respect  to  military 
transportation  for  the  A.  E.  F.  which  the  conditions 
seemed  to  warrant,  and  which  General  Pershing  later 
adopted,  and  drew  up  the  first  requisition  for  railway 
and  port  equipment,  materials,  and  tools.  Colonel 
Wilgus,  himself  a  veteran  railroad  man,  quickly  real- 
ized the  vastness  of  the  problem  which  confronted 
us  and  the  gravity  of  the  situation  resulting  from  the 
dilapidated  condition  of  the  French  railways  and 
the  appalling  shortage  of  French  rolling-stock.  He 
accordingly  informed  the  War  Department  that  the 
American  Army  must  prepare  to  operate  its  own 
trains,  made  up  of  its  own.  locomotives  and  cars,  from 
the  seaports  to  the  front,  o\'er  the  French  railways 
under  trackage  rights.  I  might  add  that  the  principle 
of  trackage  rights,  so  familiar  in  x\merica,  was  entirely 
unknown  in  France,  and  at  first  the  French  railway 
officials  did  not  know  what  Colonel  Wilgus  was  talking 
about,  for  they  found  it  difficult  to  understand  how  it 
was  possible  to  operate  two  systems  of  transportation 
over  the  same  tracks  at  the  same  time. 

The  story  of  how  the  Engineers,  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Brigadier-General  W.  W.  Atterbury,  formerly 


54        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

vice-president  of  the  Pennsylvania,  Director- General  of 
Transportation,  with  Colonel  Wilgus  as  his  deputy 
and  Chief  of  Staff,  built  up  in  France  a  transportation 
system  which  was  one  of  the  marvels  of  the  war,  is 
outside  the  province  of  this  narrative,  while  the  story 
of  the  production  of  railway  material  in  America  and 
its  shipment  overseas  would  require,  for  its  proper  tell- 
ing, a  chapter  to  itself.  It  is  enough  to  say  that,  when 
the  Armistice  was  signed,  60,000  men  were  engaged  on 
railroad  work  of  various  kinds  in  France;  more  than  a 
thousand  miles  of  standard-gauge  railway  (equal  to  the 
distance  by  the  Pennsylvania  from  New  York  to  Chi- 
cago) had  been  laid;  upward  of  1,300  locomotives  (300 
more  than  are  owned  by  the  Atchison  syst'em)  had 
been  shipped  overseas,  and,  had  the  war  continued, 
we  would  have  had  in  France  by  July,  19 19,  enough 
American  cars  to  make  up  a  train  the  caboose  of  which 
would  have  been  leaving  Paris  when  the  engine  was 
entering  Berlin. 

The  Transportation  Department  had  in  operation 
between  Tours,  which  was  the  headquarters  of  the 
Services  of  Supply,  and  Chaumont,  which  was  the 
Great  Headquarters,  an  ail-American  train,  drawn  by 
an  American  locomotive,  driven  by  an  American  engi- 
neer, and,  as  a  final  touch,  with  its  sleeping-cars  in 
charge  of  former  Pullman  porters,  in  khaki,  it  is  true, 
but  retaining  their  grins  and  their  whisk-brushes. 
Every  one  in  the  A.  E.  F.  was  inordinately  proud  of 
that  train,  which  stood  as  a  sort  of  visible  proof  of 
American  accomplishment  in  France.  It  had  been 
officially  christened  the  "Atterbury  Special"  in  honor 


"ESSAYONS"  55 

of  the  Director-General  of  Transportation,  but  the 
soldiers  had  disrespectfully  dubbed  it  the  "Attaboy 
Special."  One  morning,  as  a  group  of  American  con- 
gressmen, on  their  way  up  to  the  front,  were  standing 
on  the  platform  of  the  Tours  station,  the  special  came 
roaring  in. 

"There's  an  example  of  American  energy  and 
promptness  for  you !"  exclaimed  one  of  the  politicians 
proudly.  "What  a  contrast  to  those  wretched  French 
trains !  Not  an  hour  or  so  late,  as  they  are,  but  on 
time  to  the  very  minute." 

"Pardon  me,  sir,"  said  a  military  policeman  who 
had  overheard  the  conversation,  "that  is  yesterday's 
train." 

When  it  was  first  proposed  by  the  Transportation 
Department  that  locomotives  should  be  shipped  to 
Europe  without  being  knocked  down,  the  Ship-Building 
Board  vigorously  protested.  There  were  no  ships  in 
existence,  the  board  said,  which  could  stand  up  under 
such  an  immense  concentrated  load.  But  the  Engi- 
neers proved  that  they  knew  more  about  the  strength 
of  ships  than  did  the  ship-builders,  and  the  locomotives 
— 533  in  all — were  run  out  onto  the  wharves  on  their 
own  wheels,  picked  up  as  easily  as  thoiigh  they  were 
baby-carriages  by  the  giant  gantry  cranes,  deposited 
in  the  hold — 35  to  a  ship — together  with  their  tenders, 
packed  in  baled  hay,  and  upon  arrival  at  the  French 
ports  were  lifted  out  by  the  same  method,  lowered 
gently  onto  the  rails,  and  a  few  hours  later  rolled  off 
for  the  front  under  their  own  steam.     The  success  with 


56        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

which  the  Engineers  utilized  business  methods  and  re- 
vised specifications  to  meet  American  manufacturing 
conditions  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the 
cost  of  these  locomotives,  for  which  the  French  had 
been  paying  $51,000  each,  was  brought  down  to  $37,- 
000,  thus  saving  to  the  American  taxpayer  some 
seven  millions  of  dollars — a  very  tidy  sum. 

And,  apropos  of  rolling-stock,  here  is  a  bit  of 
secret  history  hitherto  unpublished.  When  Villa's 
raiders  were  threatening  to  destroy  the  railway-lines 
paralleling  the  Mexican  border,  the  Engineer  Corps 
designed  and  built  a  number  of  self-propelling  armored 
railway-cars  armed  with  3-inch  rifles,  machine-guns, 
and  search-lights.  When  the  German  submarines 
began  their  piratical  operations  along  the  Atlantic 
seaboard  in  the  spring  of  1918,  these  moving  fortresses 
were  secretly  rushed  up  from  the  Rio  Grande  in  order 
to  afford  protection  to  the  undefended  Jersey  coast 
towns.  It  was  well  for  the  U-boat  commanders  that 
they  did  not  attempt  to  shell  Long  Branch  and  At- 
lantic City  as  they  shelled  Scarborough  and  Broad- 
stairs.  If  they  had,  the  Engineers  and  their  armored 
cars  would  have  given  them  the  surprise  of  their  lives. 

The  non-military  person  does  not  ordinarily  asso- 
ciate with  war  such  prosaic  occupations  as  lumbering, 
quarrying,  and  highway  building.  They  seem,  at  least 
at  first  thought,  to  be  in  character  essentially  indus- 
trial. But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  workman 
played  fully  as  great  a  part  as  the  soldier  in  winning 
the  Great  War.     In  fact,  the  combat  troops  could  not 


''ESSAYONS"  57 

have  held  the  Hne  for  a  day  had  it  not  been  for  the 
labor  battahons,  which,  without  incentive  or  excite- 
ment, glory  or  reward,  and  in  most  cases  without 
public  appreciation,  toiled  so  faithfully  and  unceas- 
ingly to  build  the  wharves,  to  unload  the  ships,  to  lay 
the  railways,  to  construct  the  roads,  and  to  hurry  for- 
ward, in  an  unending  stream,  the  food  for  the  men 
and  the  food  for  the  guns.  It  is  quite  understandable, 
once  you  stop  to  think  about  it,  that  in  order  to  main- 
tain our  great  armies  in  the  field,  there  were  required 
immense  quantities  of  lumber  for  building  wharves, 
barracks,  storehouses,  hangars,  and  hospitals,  and  enor- 
mous amounts  of  stone,  crushed  rock,  and  gravel  for 
metalling  the  roads,  ballasting  the  railways,  buttress- 
ing the  bridges,  and  making  concrete  for  the  fortifica- 
tions. When  we  entered  the  war  the  supply  of  lumber 
was  not  nearly  equal  to  the  demands  of  the  Allied 
Armies,  to  say  nothing  of  our  own.  And,  though 
there  was,  of  course,  plenty  of  rock  and  gravel  in  this 
country,  we  could  not  spare  the  tonnage  to  ship  it 
overseas,  even  had  such  a  course  been  practicable. 
(Perhaps  it  has  never  occurred  to  you  how  vitally  im- 
portant an  item  gravel  is  in  military  operations.  Yet 
at  one  time  the  Germans  threatened  the  Dutch  with 
war  if  the  latter  persisted  in  their  refusal  to  permit 
German  gravel  to  be  shipped  across  Holland  for  the 
construction  of  concrete  fortifications  in  Belgium.)  In 
view  of  these  conditions,  it  devolved  upon  the  Engi- 
neers to  organize  and  equip  special  forestr}',  quany, 
and  highway  regiments,  as  weU  as  numerous  labor  bat- 
talions, and  hurry  them  overseas  with  orders  to  obtain 


58        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

the  urgently  needed  materials  from  the  forests  and 
quarries  of  France. 

Though  Engineer  officers  of  the  regular  establish- 
ment were,  of  course,  given  command  of  these  special- 
ist regiments,  the  other  officers  as  well  as  the  soldiers 
themselves  were  recruited  from  men  trained  in  the 
particular  sort  of  work  which  each  regiment  was  ex- 
pected to  perform.     How  to  obtain  officers  of  sufficient 
experience  in  these  various  lines  of  industry,  and  in 
sufficient  numbers,  promised  at  first  to  be  a  serious 
problem,  but  it  was  quickly  solved  by  the  Personnel 
Division  of  the  Engineers,  which  had  had  on  file,  ever 
since  the  war-clouds  first  appeared  on  America's  hori- 
zon, tens  of  thousands  of  letters  from  men  trained  in 
every  branch  of  the  engineering  profession,  offering 
their    services    to    the  government   in   case   of   war. 
Hence,  when  it  was  decided  to  raise  a  forestry  regi- 
ment, it  was  a  simple  matter  to  turn  to  the  files  and 
find   the   names   of   thousands   of  men — mill-owners, 
forest-rangers,  lumbermen — with  their  experience  and 
qualffications   carefully   listed,   who   were   intimately 
familiar  with  every  phase  of  the  industry,  from  tree  to 
finished  board.     The  best  qualified  of  these  applicants 
were  offered  commissions  by  telegraph  and  instructed 
to  go  out  into  the  lumber  country  and  recruit  their 
companies  and  battalions  from  men  who  had  worked 
under  them  or  whom  they  knew.     Soon  the  walls  of 
every  employment-office,  bunk-house,  and  cook-shack 
from  the  pine  woods  of  Maine  to  the  spruce  forests  of 
Washington  blossomed  with  posters  calling  for  axe- 
men, sawyers,  log-drivers,  timber-cruisers,  mill-opera- 


"ESSAYONS"  59 

tors,  cookees,  teamsters,  for  immediate  service  over- 
seas. The  response  was  prompt  and  startling.  From 
their  camps  on  the  Kennebec  and  the  Androscoggin, 
from  the  Adirondacks,  from  the  pine-clad  shores  of 
Superior  and  Huron,  from  the  Michigan  Peninsula 
and  the  North  Woods  of  Minnesota,  from  the  forested 
slopes  of  the  Wind  River,  the  Bitter  Roots,  and  the 
Cascades,  from  the  big  timber  of  the  Far  Nor'west 
the  lumbermen  came  pouring  in,  in  mackinaws  and 
parkas,  in  moccasins  and  shoepacks,  in  knitted  toques 
and  caps  of  fur,  their  scanty  belongings  wrapped  in 
the  blanket-rolls  slung  across  their  backs  and  often 
with  their  axes  on  their  shoulders.  Sinewy-limbed, 
saddle-colored,  homy-handed,  tough  as  the  timber  of 
the  forests  whence  they  came,  these  were  the  real 
pioneers,  the  conquerors  of  the  wilderness,  the  last  of 
the  frontiersmen,  and  Europe  will,  in  all  likelihood, 
never  see  their  picturesque  like  again. 

The  first  of  the  forestry  regiments,  the  loth  Engi- 
neers, sailed  for  Europe  five  months  after  the  declara- 
tion of  war,  followed  at  short  intervals  by  several  simi- 
lar organizations.  Immediately  upon  their  arrival  in 
France  lumbering  operations  were  begun  in  the  Vosges 
and  the  Pyrenees  (so  do  not  be  surprised  if  the  next 
time  you  go  shooting  in  Maine  or  fishing  in  Michigan 
your  guide  interlards  his  conversation  with  French  or 
Spanish  phrases),  using  French  mills  at  first  but  later 
installing  plants  of  the  American  type.  The  enlisted 
men  of  the  forestry  outfits  were,  as  I  have  said,  for  the 
most  part  lumbermen  by  trade,  officered  by  men 
familiar  with  lumbering  in  all  its  details.     The  result 


6o        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

was  a  striking  illustration  of  what  American  energy 
and  American  methods  can  do,  for  the  official  reports 
show  that  mills  which,  under  French  management, 
were  yielding  500  board  feet  a  day,  were  made  to 
yield  ten  times  that  quantity  when  operated  by 
Yankee  lumbermen.  In  the  Vosges  this  work  was 
carried  on  so  close  to  the  front  that  the  plants  were 
repeatedly  bombed  by  enemy  aircraft  and  shelled  by 
enemy  artillery,  the  forestry  troops,  though  listed  as 
non-combatants,  frequently  suffering  heavy  casualties. 
It  took  a  high  order  of  courage  for  these  men  to  go  un- 
concernedly about  their  business  of  tree-felling,  haul- 
ing, and  sawing  with  German  shells  yowling  through 
the  branches  and  bursting  all  about  them.  The  saw- 
mills were  of  the  portable  type,  however,  and  when 
the  fire  of  the  German  guns  became  too  accurate  and 
heavy,  the  whole  plant  was  packed  up  and  shifted  to 
a  new  location.  I  don't  believe  in  letting  loose  upon 
my  defenseless  readers  swarms  of  figures,  but  it  will 
serve  to  give  those  of  them  who  are  familiar  with  lum- 
bering some  idea  of  what  our  forestry  regiments  ac- 
complished when  I  mention  that  during  the  month  of 
October,  1918,  alone,  they  produced  50,000,000  board 
feet  of  sawed  lumber,  80,000  cords  of  firewood,  and 
enough  standard-gauge  ties  to  build  a  single-track  rail- 
way from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the  Gulf. 

In  raising  the  quarry,  highway,  and  inland  water- 
way regiments,  the  same  method  was  adopted  as  in 
the  organization  of  the  forestry  battalions.  Enormous 
quantities  of  crushed  rock  were  required  for  concrete 
and  for  the  construction  and  repair  of  roads,  but  though 


"ESSAYONS"  6i 

numerous  quarries  were  available  in  the  American 
areas,  experienced  quarrymen  and  quarr>'ing  equip- 
ment were  lacking.  Accordingly  a  special  quarry  regi- 
ment, the  28th  Engineers,  was  organized  in  the  United 
States  in  November,  191 7,  with  a  strength  of  60  officers 
and  some  1,500  men.  A  skeleton  organization  was 
formed  by  transferring  a  few  officers  and  a  small  de- 
tachment of  men  from  a  road  regiment,  the  new  unit 
being  raised  to  strength  by  giving  commissions  to 
quarry  managers  and  superintendents  and  filling  up 
the  ranks  with  drafted  quarrymen. 

Spreading  over  almost  the  whole  of  France  is  a 
veritable  network  of  navigable  rivers  and  canals,  of 
which  the  Engineers  availed  themselves  to  the  ut- 
most in  the  transportation  of  material  and  supplies. 
Transportation  by  the  inland  waterways  was  in  charge 
of  the  57  th  Engineers,  this  regiment  being  largely 
recruited  from  men  who  had  had  experience  on  the 
canals  and  rivers  of  the  United  States.  In  the  days 
to  come  many  are  the  tales  that  will  be  told  by  skip- 
pers of  stern-wheelers  on  the  Mississippi  and  captains 
on  the  Erie  Canal  of  the  days  when  they  and  their 
huskies  of  the  Inland  Waterways  battalions  moved 
the  supplies  for  Pershing's  men  up  the  Seine  and 
through  the  canals  of  the  Mame  and  the  Rhone. 

To  the  dredging,  dock  construction,  and  stevedore 
regiments  was  assigned  the  gigantic  task  of  dredging 
the  channels  and  harbors  of  the  seaports  which  the 
French  placed  at  our  disposal,  of  building  wharves  and 
berths  for  the  reception  of  American  ships,  and  of  the 
transferring  of  the  cargoes  from  ship  to  shore.     The 


62        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

magnitude  of  their  task  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  cargo 
shipments  grew  from  20,000  tons  in  July,  191 7,  to 
1,000,000  tons  in  November  of  the  following  year, 
while  the  23  ship-berths  which  the  French  Govern- 
ment originally  assigned  to  us  had  nearly  quadrupled 
when  the  Armistice  was  signed. 

Unless  you  have  marched  with  armies  or  trekked 
across  hot  and  arid  lands,  you  cannot  know  what  it 
is  to  be  thirsty — really  thirsty,  I  mean;  so  thirsty 
that  your  tongue  swells  until  it  all  but  chokes  you  or 
loUs  from  your  mouth  like  that  of  a  panting  dog. 
Water  is  infinitely  more  important  to  the  success  of 
a  military  operation  than  arms  or  ammunition;  to 
a  certain  extent  it  is  more  important  than  food;  for, 
though  troops  can  fight  for  an  amazingly  long  time  on 
short  rations,  or  even  on  no  rations  at  all,  they  cannot 
fight  without  water.  The  vital  importance  of  provid- 
ing an  adequate  water-supply  was  learned  by  the 
French  in  Algeria  and  Morocco,  by  the  British  in 
India  and  the  Sudan,  where  the  deserts  were  strewn 
for  miles  with  the  bodies  of  soldiers  who  had  died 
from  thirst.  In  the  Cuban  campaign  our  armies  had 
far  more  deaths  from  impure  water  than  from  Spanish 
bullets.  During  the  Italian  offensive  on  the  Carso, 
that  terrible  plateau  of  sun-scorched  rock  which  lies 
beyond  the  Isonzo,  hundreds  of  men,  Italians  and  Aus- 
trians  alike,  died  from  thirst,  the  Austrians  being  even- 
tually compelled  to  retreat  because  the  Italian  artillery 
had  destroyed  the  pipe-lines  which  supplied  them  with 
water.     During  the  fighting  on  the  Western  Front  dur- 


"ESSAYONS"  63 

ing  the  last  summer  of  the  war,  when  the  semitropic 
sun  of  eastern  France  beat  down  on  the  heavy-laden 
backs  of  the  panting,  sweating  men,  when  milUons  of 
feet  and  hoofs  ground  the  roads  to  powder  and  filled 
eyes,  ears,  throats,  and  nostrils  with  the  yellow,  chok- 
ing dust,  when  the  air  reeked  with  the  mingled  stenches 
of  leather,  gasoline,  sweating  horse-flesh,  and  human 
perspiration,  and  when,  as  the  canteens  emptied,  the 
men  peered  anxiously  over  their  shoulders  for  the  com- 
pany water-carts,  thousands  realized  as  never  before 
the  truth  of  KipHng's  words: 

"When  it  comes  to  slaughter, 
You  must  do  your  work  on  water." 

Now,  when  a  hundred  thousand  men  and  thirty- 
five  thousand  animals  are  crowded  into  a  sector  per- 
haps three  miles  wide  and  seven  miles  deep,  the  prob- 
lem of  keeping  those  men  and  animals  supplied  with 
water  becomes  tremendous.  The  responsibility  for 
supplying  with  water  the  troops  in  the  field  fell  upon 
the  Army  Water-Supply  Service,  which,  as  might  be 
expected,  was  a  branch  of  the  Corps  of  Engineers. 
The  Water-Supply  Service  was  really  a  wholesaler  of 
water,  delivery  being  made  at  "water-points,"  from 
which  water  was  drawn  directly  by  men  and  animals, 
the  largest  customers  being,  however,  the  ubiquitous 
two-wheel  water-carts  of  the  infantry  and  artillery. 
To  supply  these  "water-points"  every  available  source 
was  utilized,  springs  developed,  deep  wells  bored,  vil- 
lage wells  and  cisterns  cleaned  out,  streams  purified 
and  pumping-stations  established,  the  aim  being  to 


64        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

provide  water  within  a  mile  and  a  half  of  every  con- 
sumer at  the  front.  Ordinarily  two  gallons  of  water 
per  man  per  day  were  furnished  at  the  front,  this 
quantity  being  sufficient  for  drinking,  cooking,  and 
lavatory  purposes,  but  during  the  enormous  troop  con- 
centrations incident  to  the  St.  Mihiel  and  Argonne 
offensives  this  quantity  had  to  be  materially  reduced, 
during  those  periods  of  stress  and  action  the  men  hav- 
ing scant  opportunity  for  either  cooking  or  bathing. 
It  was  impossible,  however,  to  reduce  the  quantity  for 
the  animals,  for  each  of  which  eight  to  ten  gallons  had 
to  be  provided  daily. 

Even  under  battle  conditions  the  purity  of  the 
water  was  the  first  consideration,  for  impure  water 
can  work  far  more  havoc  with  an  army  than  enemy 
shell.  In  order  to  provide  against  this  contingency, 
mobile  laboratories  for  water-testing  purposes  moved 
in  the  van  of  the  armies,  and  during  the  drives  the 
Water-Supply  troops  were  provided  with  poison-testing 
kits,  for,  warned  by  the  experiences  of  the  British  in 
German  Southwest  Africa,  where  wells  were  systemati- 
cally poisoned  by  the  enemy,  we  took  no  chances. 
Sources  of  supply  were,  wherever  possible,  protected, 
it  being  considered  almost  as  serious  an  offense  for  a 
soldier  to  contaminate  a  water-supply  as  for  him  to 
sleep  on  post.  Where  water  was  found  to  be  polluted, 
the  troops,  no  matter  how  thirsty,  were  under  no  cir- 
cumstances permitted  to  use  it  until  it  had  been  filtered 
and  sterilized.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  chlorine 
used  in  gas-sheU  to  kill  Germans  was  used  by  the 
Water-Supply  Service  in  minute  quantities  to  kill  an 


"ESSAYONS"  6s 

equally  dangerous  and  far  more  insidious  enemy — the 
microbic  disease-carriers  in  the  water.  Special  motor- 
trucks, equipped  with  pumping,  filtering,  sterilizing, 
and  testing  apparatus,  time  after  time  demonstrated 
that  they  were  able  to  get  into  action  and  deliver  pure 
water  from  a  polluted  supply  within  thirty  minutes 
after  their  arrival. 

In  many  cases  the  position  of  the  troops  and  the 
nature  of  the  terrain  made  it  possible  to  deliver  water 
only  by  hauling.  This  was  done  by  means  of  trains  of 
motorized  water-tanks  and  by  special  tank-cars  operat- 
ing over  the  narrow-gauge  railway  systems,  the  tank 
trucks  and  cars  being  emptied  into  reservoirs  built  in 
strategic  positions  near  the  front.  A  common  and 
quickly  built  reservoir  consisted  of  a  hole  in  the  ground, 
a  waterproof  canvas  lining,  and  a  camouflaged  cover. 
The  lives  of  the  tank-train  truck-drivers  were  hard 
and  exciting,  for  though  the  roads  over  which  they 
had  to  pass  in  approaching  the  front  were  nearly  always 
subjected  to  hea\y  shell-fire,  there  could  be  no  let-up 
in  suppl}'ing  water  for  the  troops  on  the  firing-line. 
]\Iost  of  the  activities  of  the  Water-Supply  troops  were 
between  the  locations  of  the  light  artillery  and  the 
heav>'  artillery,  the  men  consequently  working  almost 
continuously  within  the  areas  under  enemy  bombard- 
ment. On  one  occasion,  during  the  open  warfare  inci- 
dent to  the  St.  Mihiel  olTensive,  the  driver  of  a  water- 
truck  ventured  so  close  to  a  German  machine-gun 
nest  that  when  he  came  back  his  tank  was  found  to  be 
better  adapted  for  road-sprinkling  than  for  water- 
transportation  purposes. 


66        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

It  is  scarcely  necessaty  to  remark  that  enormous 
quantities  of  material  were  required  for  the  work  of 
the  Water-Supply  Ser\dce,  60  miles  of  pipe  and  300 
gas-driven  pumps  being  used  during  the  St.  Mihiel  and 
Argonne-Meuse  operations  alone.  As  there  were  not 
enough  Water-Supply  troops — the  26th  Engineers — for 
the  needs  of  the  army,  it  was  found  necessary  to  sup- 
plement their  numbers  ^\ith  other  Engineer  units, 
motor-truck  companies,  and  pioneer  infantry,  the 
Water-Supply  Service  of  the  First  Army  reaching  a 
maximum  of  3,500  officers  and  men. 

One  does  not  usually  associate  intelligence  work 
with  water-supply,  yet  the  American  Water-Supply 
Ser\dce  had  an  intelligence  section  which  was  as 
efficient  as  that  of  any  branch  of  the  army.  Informa- 
tion regarding  the  water-supply  in  the  territory  be- 
hind the  enemy  lines  was  gathered  from  aU  available 
sources,  the  Wasserversorgung  maps  captured  from  the 
Germans  affording  much  valuable  data,  and  the  in- 
formation thus  obtained  was  published  at  frequent 
intervals,  together  with  maps.  The  production  of 
these  water-maps  finally  became  so  highly  developed 
that  it  was  possible  for  the  intelligence  section  of  the 
Water-Supply  Service  to  place  full  information  at  the 
disposal  of  the  divisional  intelligence  officers  within 
twenty-four  hours  after  it  had  been  received.  So  rapid 
was  the  American  advance  in  certain  sectors  that  scores 
of  Boche  pumping-plants  were  captured  while  still  in 
operation,  and  turned  to  the  task  of  supplying  the 
thirsty  Yanks.  I  might  add  that  German  prisoners, 
particularly  of  the  corresponding  enemy  service,  fre- 


''ESSAYONS"  67 

quently  were  as  successfully  pumped  for  information 
as  the  wells  sunk  by  the  enemy  were  pumped  for 
water. 

One  of  the  most  picturesque  and  interesting  devel- 
opments of  the  war — and,  because  of  the  secrecy  which 
surrounded  it,  one  of  the  least  known — is  the  work  of 
the  flash  and  sound  ranging  section  of  the  Engineer 
Corps.  For  the  benefit  of  the  uninitiated — and  most 
people  are  uninitiated,  so  far  as  this  phase  of  warfare 
is  concerned — I  might  explain  that  flash-ranging  means 
the  location  of  an  enemy  gun  or  battery  by  the  detec- 
tion of  the  flash,  and  sound-ranging  by  the  location  of 
the  sound.  Flash-reading,  as  it  is  called,  is  carried  on 
by  means  of  two  or  more  observers  provided  with 
powerful  telescopes,  who  are  stationed  at  known  dis- 
tances apart.  By  "spotting"  the  flashes  of  an  enemy 
battery  and  reporting  them,  together  with  the  exact 
direction  at  which  they  occur,  and  by  using  these  read- 
ings as  a  basis,  a  simple  calculation  in  triangulation 
will  give  the  location  of  the  gun.  So  highly  has  this 
flash-ranging  been  developed  that  a  gun  can  now  be 
located  within  five  yards,  when  the  ''core"  of  the 
flash  can  be  seen.  In  principle  the  process  is  extremely 
simple,  but  in  practice  it  is  complicated  by  the  fact 
that  the  obser\^ers  may  not  train  their  telescopes  on 
the  same  flash,  in  which  case  the  gun  position  calcu- 
lated at  headquarters  from  their  telephoned  reports 
will  be  in  error.  This  difficulty  is  met,  however,  by 
providing  each  observer  with  an  outpost  switch-set, 
by  means  of  which  he  can  flash  a  miniature  light  at 


68        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

the  headquarters  station  at  the  instant  he  makes  an 
observation,  just  as  a  hght  glows  on  a  hotel  telephone 
switchboard  when  a  guest  up-stairs  rings  for  ice-water. 
When  several  of  the  observers  flash  their  light  simul- 
taneously, it  is  assumed  that  they  all  probably  caught 
the  same  flash,  and  their  observations  are  then  plotted. 
In  other  words,  the  line  of  sight  of  each  observer  is 
prolonged  on  a  map  until  they  intersect,  the  point  of 
intersection  corresponding  with  the  location  of  the 
German  gun. 

Flash-ranging  was  also  found  to  be  of  great  value 
in  checking  the  ranges  of  our  own  guns.  If  we  were 
firing  at  a  hidden  target,  a  shell  was  timed  so  that  it 
would  burst  when  at  the  top  of  its  trajectory.  Ob- 
servers would  ''spot"  this  burst,  and  if  it  was  reported 
as  being  at  the  spot  where  calculations  showed  that  it 
should  occur,  the  gunners  knew  that  they  had  the  cor- 
rect range. 

Sound-ranging  was  carried  on  along  much  the 
same  lines  as  flash-ranging,  except  that  the  readings 
were  made  by  instruments  instead  of  by  observers. 
Large  guns  may  be  camouflaged  so  that  their  detec- 
tion, either  by  aerial  observation  or  by  the  flash  of 
the  gun  when  fired,  is  extremely  difficult,  but  there 
is  no  known  way  to  conceal  the  location  of  the  gun 
from  sound-ranging  instruments,  suitably  placed  and 
properly  operated.  This  method  became  so  highly 
developed  that  it  was  reported  that  during  the  latter 
months  of  the  war  over  80  per  cent  of  the  work  of 
locating  gun  positions  on  the  British  Front  was  done 
by   sound-ranging.     The   instruments   used   for   this 


"ESSAYONS"  69 

work  are  of  a  highly  technical  nature  and  for  their 
successful  operation  require  a  skilled  personnel.  Re- 
cording instruments,  so  delicate  that  their  use  here- 
tofore had  not  been  dreamed  of  outside  of  experimental 
laboratories  and  then  only  in  the  hands  of  men  care- 
fully trained  in  their  operation,  were  set  up  on  the 
firing-line  and  operated  successfully  under  battle  con- 
ditions, even  when  the  air  was  quivering  from  heavy 
bombardments  and  the  earth  was  shaking  from  the 
deluge  of  steel.  The  sound-receivers,  or  detecting  in- 
struments, are  located  well  to  the  front,  whereas  the 
recording  instruments  are  several  miles  in  the  rear. 
A  sound  disturbance  due  to  the  firing  of  a  gun  some- 
where behind  the  enemy  lines  is  transmitted  through 
several  miles  of  wire  to  the  recording  instrument  in  the 
rear,  and  the  sound  records  received  almost  simulta- 
neously from  several  detecting  instruments  are  traced 
on  a  sensitized  ribbon,  or  tape  of  photographic  paper, 
or  on  a  ribbon  of  smoked  paper,  depending  on  the 
type  of  instrument  used.  The  intervals  of  time  elaps- 
ing between  the  arrival  of  the  various  sound  disturb- 
ances is  used  as  a  basis  for  determining  the  origin  of 
sound  which  produced  the  records.  By  this  means 
over  100  new  German  gun  positions  were  located  in 
a  single  day  on  the  British  Front.  In  fact,  before  the 
assault  on  Messines  Ridge  the  British  sound-rangers 
had  located  practically  every  German  battery,  so  that 
the  British  gunners  had  their  exact  range  when  the 
attack  was  launched.  WTien  the  Armistice  put  an 
end  to  hostilities  there  were  in  operation  along  the 
American  Front  some  twelve  complete  American  sound- 


70        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

ranging  sections,  each  covering  a  front  of  approxi- 
mately five  miles. 

A  sound-ranging  section  on  an  active  sector  of 
the  American  front  usually  consisted  of  four  officers 
and  from  eighty  to  a  hundred  men,  one-half  of  whom 
were  specially  trained  in  the  care  of  instruments,  ob- 
servation work,  and  mathematical  computations.  On 
a  stable  sector  the  personnel  of  the  section  could,  of 
course,  be  considerably  reduced. 

The  principles,  methods,  and  instruments  em- 
ployed by  the  sound-ranging  section  of  the  Engineers 
for  locating  active  enemy  batteries  or  for  ranging  the 
friendly  artillery  on  any  objective  whose  map-location 
was  known  were  of  an  extremely  technical  nature  and 
not  easy  of  comprehension  by  a  lay  mind.  So  for  the 
information  of  those  readers  who  are  technically  in- 
clined I  have  asked  the  Engineer  officer  who  was  in 
charge  of  sound-ranging  in  the  A.  E.  F.  to  explain  in 
the  simplest  possible  language  how  the  work  was  done. 
Here  is  his  explanation.     Make  the  most  of  it. 

The  principle  employed  by  the  sound-ranging  sec- 
tion of  the  Engineers  for  locating  active  enemy  bat- 
teries or  for  ranging  the  friendly  artillery  on  any 
objective  whose  map  co-ordinates  are  known  is  the 
following:  The  time  of  arrival  of  the  sound  from  an 
enemy  gun  (or  from  the  burst  of  the  shells  from  the 
friendly  artillery)  at  three  surveyed  stations  inside  the 
friendly  lines  determines  the  position  of  the  source  of 
the  sound  if  simple  corrections  are  applied  for  the 
temperature  of  the  air  and  the  direction  and  velocity 
of  the  wind.     For  example,  if  the  three  surveyed  sta- 


"ESSAYONS"  71 

tions  are  on  an  arc  of  a  circle  and  the  sound  of  the 
enemy  gun  arrives  at  all  three  stations  at  the  same 
time,  then  the  gun  must  be  at  the  centre  of  the  circle. 
If  the  sound  arrives  first  at  the  westernmost  station 
and  last  at  the  easternmost,  then  the  gun  must  lie  to 
the  westward  of  the  centre.  If  the  sound  arrives  earli- 
est at  the  middle  station  and  later  at  the  flank  stations, 
then  the  gun  must  lie  between  the  centre  of  the  circle 
and  the  stations.  In  practice  six  stations  are  used 
to  insure  greater  accuracy,  and  graphical  methods  of 
computation  are  employed  to  shorten  the  time  of 
calculation.  Accuracies  of  fifty  yards  are  regarded 
as  average,  and  from  one  to  two  minutes  for  calcula- 
tion are  usually  needed. 

A  somewhat  different  form  of  sound-ranging  is 
used  for  the  detection  of  aircraft  at  night.  The  appa- 
ratus for  this  aerial  sound-ranging  consists  of  large 
sound-gathering  instruments  which  are  used  to  direct 
search-lights  in  the  location  of  approaching  airplanes. 
When  a  bombing-plane  approaches  at  night  the  hum 
of  the  motor  can  be  heard  at  a  distance  of  from  one  to 
three  miles  or  more,  depending  upon  the  direction  of 
the  sound  and  the  atmospheric  conditions.  The  direc- 
tion of  sound,  however,  particularly  when  it  originates 
in  the  sky,  is  illusive  to  the  naked  ear  and  search-lights 
were  obliged  to  sweep  the  heavens  in  the  general  di- 
rection from  which  the  airplane  was  believed  to  be 
approaching,  in  an  endeavor  to  locate  it.  By  the  use 
of  these  detectors,  however,  the  sound  of  an  airplane 
can  be  detected  at  a  considerably  greater  distance  than 
by  the  naked  ear,  and,  what  is  even  more  important. 


72        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

its  direction  can  be  determined  within  a  very  small 
angle — less  than  five  degrees.  In  this  way  the  area 
over  which  the  search-light  has  to  sweep  is  greatly 
reduced,  and  the  chances  of  locating  the  aerial  ma- 
rauder are  enormously  increased. 

Extensive  experiments  have  been  conducted  in  this 
country  by  the  Engineer  Corps  in  the  development 
of  these  aerial  sound-detectors.  One  form  consists  of 
four  horns,  two  in  a  vertical  and  two  in  a  horizontal 
plant,  with  listening-tubes  leading  from  the  small  ends 
to  the  receivers  of  the  observer's  head-set.  These 
horns  are  mounted  so  as  to  permit  rotation  on  a  hori- 
zontal shaft  and  turning  on  a  plane-table,  the  whole 
being  supported  on  a  sort  of  steel  tower  which,  owing 
to  its  height  and  the  fact  that  it  cannot  easily  be  moved, 
affords  a  rather  conspicuous  target  for  the  enemy. 
The  obvious  disadvantage  of  this  type  is  recompensed 
in  a  measure,  however,  by  its  accuracy  and  by  the  fact 
that  it  wiU  so  magnify  a  sound  that  the  operators  can 
hear  the  tick  of  a  watch  a  hundred  and  fifty  yards 
away.  This  apparatus  is,  however,  large  and  cumber- 
some, and  though  excellent  for  seacoast  and  fortress 
defense,  is  not  adapted  for  use  in  the  field,  where  ex- 
treme mobility  is  required.  For  this  latter  purpose 
paraboloid  sound-reflectors  have  been  developed. 
These  paraboloids  are  about  nine  feet  in  diameter, 
made  in  sectors  of  material  similar  to  beaver  board, 
and  look  like  enormous  editions  of  kettles  used  for 
boiling  soap.  They  can  be  taken  down  and  packed 
into  small  space  for  transportation,  and  are  easily 
set  up;    being  mounted  on  Ford  chassis,  they  can  go 


"ESSAYONS"  73 

anywhere  that  a  ''flivver"  can  go.  The  paraboloids, 
like  the  horns,  are  directed  by  balancing  the  sound 
so  that  it  is  equally  audible  in  both  ears.  These  in- 
struments have  a  sensitiveness  double  that  of  the  un- 
aided ear  and  by  means  of  them  a  sound  can  be 
located  to  within  three  degrees. 

When  the  officer  in  charge  of  one  of  these  sound- 
detectors  hears  through  the  receivers  of  his  head-set 
the  rhythmic  hum  which  denotes  an  approaching  air- 
plane— and  I  might  mention,  parenthetically,  that  ex- 
perienced observers  can  tell  with  almost  absolute  cer- 
tainty not  only  the  nationality  of  the  approaching 
machine  but  even  the  t>pe  and  power  of  its  engines — 
he  orders  several  sound-readings  to  be  taken  at  definite 
intervals  of  time.  With  these  readings  as  a  basis  for 
the  calculation,  the  probable  location  of  the  airplane 
at  the  end  of  the  next  time  interval  is  plotted  and  the 
search-light  is  flashed  in  that  direction  just  long  enough 
to  locate  the  machine.  Quick  work  is  required,  how- 
ever, for  the  airplane  often  travels  at  a  hundred  miles 
or  more  an  hour  and  may  abruptly  change  its  course 
at  any  moment.  Then,  the  plane  once  spotted,  the 
beam  of  the  search-light  never  leaves  it,  and  the  waiting 
crews  of  the  antiaircraft  guns  get  to  work.  Experi- 
ments are  now  being  conducted  to  enable  these  listen- 
ing devices  to  be  used  in  synchronization  with  search- 
lights, so  that,  when  the  light  is  flashed,  the  airplane 
will  be  within  the  beam  and  no  indication  of  the  pres- 
ence of  the  search-light  will  be  given  the  aviator  until 
he  finds  himself  illuminated  as  a  spot-light  follows  the 
movements  of  a  dancer  on  a  darkened  stage. 


74        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

In  the  autumn  of  191 7  the  National  Research 
Council,  at  the  request  of  the  Chief  of  Engineers,  in- 
augurated an  extensive  series  of  search-light  investiga- 
tions, which,  thanks  to  the  enthusiastic  co-operation  of 
scientists,  manufacturers,  and  certain  government  bu- 
reaus, resulted  in  a  number  of  remarkable  develop- 
ments. Eighteen  different  kinds  of  search-lights  were 
developed  during  these  experiments,  the  first  being 
placed  in  operation  in  France  in  October,  191 8.  This 
represented  an  entirely  new  form  of  light,  more  power- 
ful than  any  heretofore  produced  by  any  nation.  It 
weighs  about  one-eighth  as  much  as  the  most  powerful 
search-light  theretofore  produced,  costs  only  about 
one-third  as  much,  and  has  about  one-quarter  the 
cubage.  Other  improvements  now  in  progress  give 
assurance  that  its  range  will  be  doubled,  its  cost  still 
further  reduced,  and  its  mobility  greatly  increased. 
And,  what  is  of  almost  equal  importance,  the  designs 
are  now  becoming  so  simplified  that  production  need 
no  longer  be  confined  to  highly  specialized  shops,  but 
may  be  distributed  over  the  country  to  all  classes  of 
machine  manufacturers,  thus  making  it  possible  to 
produce  a  large  quantity  in  a  relatively  short  time. 
With  this  new  equipment  the  United  States  will  pos- 
sess a  search-light  having  an  effective  range  approxi- 
mately twice  that  of  the  best  search-light  produced 
before  the  war,  with  four  times  as  great  a  field.  Two 
features  of  the  latest  types  of  lamps  are  particularly 
worthy  of  notice.  These  are,  first,  the  ''dish-pan" 
type  of  light,  the  chief  characteristic  of  which  is  that 
it  has  no  lens;    and,  second,  the  metal  mirror,  which 


"ESSAYONS"  75 

is  much  more  easily  manufactured,  is  far  less  fragile, 
costs  only  a  third  as  much,  and  possesses  almost  as 
great  reflecting  qualities  as  the  glass  ones. 

The  search-light  used  by  the  American  forces  for 
antiaircraft  work  is  the  heavy  6o-inch  seacoast  type 
— the  largest  light  known — lightened  and  modified  for 
use  in  the  field,  with  a  range  of  practically  30,000  feet. 
As  the  result  of  recent  experiments  it  has  been  found 
that  the  visibility  at  12,000  feet  was  85  per  cent,  while 
at  15,000  feet,  or  nearly  3  miles,  it  was  43  per  cent. 
In  order  to  obtain  these  standards  of  comparison  for 
visibility  for  search-lights,  an  aviator  was  directed 
to  fly  back  and  forth  through  the  beam  a  certain  num- 
ber of  times.  If  the  observers  on  the  ground  recorded 
the  full  number  of  passages  across  the  beam,  100  per 
cent  was  registered,  this  occurring  regularly  at  5,000 
feet,  and  in  most  cases  during  tests  at  8,000  feet.  The 
percentage  of  visibility  was,  in  other  words,  the  num- 
ber of  times  the  airplane  was  seen  to  the  number  of 
times  it  crossed  the  beam. 

When  warfare  of  movement  becomes  stabilized 
into  position  or  trench  warfare,  it  is  almost  certain 
that,  sooner  or  later,  one  side  or  the  other  will  resort 
to  some  form  of  underground  attack.  To  permit  of 
this  subterranean  warfare,  certain  conditions  are  requi- 
site: the  lines  must  be  fairly  close  together,  the  level 
of  the  ground-water  must  be  deep,  and  the  ground 
itself  must  not  be  too  hard.  These  obstacles  to  suc- 
cessful mining  are  not  insuperable,  however,  for,  pre- 
paratory to  their  assault  on  Messines  Ridge,  the  British 


76        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

drove  a  tunnel  which  was  a  mile  in  length,  and  on 
the  Carso  I  saw  Italian  engineers  driving  their  galleries 
through  solid  rock.  France  and  England  early  recog- 
nized the  importance  of  this  form  of  warfare  and 
organized  their  miners  accordingly,  and,  upon  our 
entrance  into  the  war,  we  too  organized  and  sent  to 
France  a  mining  regiment — the  27th  Engineers.  It 
is  estimated  that  by  the  summer  of  1918  there  were 
upward  of  40,000  skilled  miners  on  the  Western 
Front,  these  soldiers  of  the  pick  and  drill  having 
been  brought  from  the  remotest  corners  of  the  earth 
— from  the  Yukon,  the  Rand,  and  the  Congo,  from 
Mexico,  Australia,  and  Cahfornia.  In  my  "Vive  la 
France!"  I  told,  if  I  remember  rightly,  of  the  Cor- 
nish miners,  known  as  ''kickers,"  who  lay  on  their 
backs,  as  they  do  in  the  tin  mines  in  Cornwall,  where 
the  galleries  are  so  low  that  there  is  no  room  to  swing 
a  pick,  and  kicked  away  the  earth  by  means  of  a  sort 
of  spur  attached  to  their  heels. 

The  officers  of  the  American  mining  regiment  were 
engineers  who  had  had  practical  experience  in  all  those 
far-off  regions  where  men  seek  their  fortunes  in  the 
earth.  One  of  them,  a  young  lieutenant,  was  diamond- 
mining  in  the  Katanga  district  of  the  Congo  when 
word  reached  him  by  native  runner  that  the  United 
States  had  decided  to  take  a  hand  in  the  Great  War. 
It  took  him  four  months  of  uninterrupted  travel  by 
horse,  wagon,  rail,  and  boat  to  reach  the  United  States 
and  offer  his  services  to  the  Chief  of  Engineers.  An- 
other of  our  mining  officers  was  a  prisoner  of  the  revo- 
lutionists in  Mexico  when  the  rumor  penetrated  to  his 


"ESSAYONS"  77 

prison  cell  that  the  United  States  had  gone  to  war. 
That  night  he  overpowered  his  guards,  scaled  the 
prison  wall,  made  his  way  on  foot  across  northern 
Mexico,  the  journey  being  relieved  from  monotony 
by  several  hairbreadth  escapes  from  bandit  bands, 
and  reached  the  border  in  time  to  join  the  Engineers 
and  go  to  France  with  one  of  the  first  contingents. 

In  former  wars  military  mining  was  almost  wholly 
confined  to  siege  operations;  that  is,  driving  galleries 
under  fortified  positions  and  blowing  them  up.  But 
the  Great  War  developed  an  entirely  new  system  of 
mining  tactics,  which  included  frontal  and  flank  at- 
tacks, raids,  enveloping  movements,  and  other  phases 
of  war  as  fought  on  the  surface  of  the  earth.  ''Unlike 
the  soldier  who  fights  above  ground,"  explained  a  min- 
ing officer,  "the  miner  has  to  be  prepared  for  attacks 
not  only  against  his  front  and  flanks,  but  for  assaults 
which  may  come  from  overhead  or  from  underneath. 
In  other  words,  he  has  four  flanks  to  defend  instead 
of  two." 

A  typical  mining  position,  such  as  would  be  pre- 
pared on  an  active  sector  of  the  front,  would  consist  of 
an  upper  level  having  a  series  of  forked  galleries,  known 
as  "feelers,"  with  geophone  listening-posts  at  their  ex- 
tremities, and  a  deeper  level,  with  numerous  "fighting 
branches"  projecting  from  it,  to  protect  the  lower 
flank.  Just  as  the  sentries  in  the  trenches  strained 
their  eyes  to  detect  any  ominous  figures  in  the  dark- 
ness of  No  Man's  Land,  so  the  mining  sentinels,  crouch- 
ing over  their  geophones  in  the  headings  of  dim-lit 
galleries,  strained  their  ears  to  catch  the  faint  sounds 


78        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

which  gave  warning  that  the  enemy  was  approaching 
underground.  The  geophone,  which  has  proved  of  in- 
calculable value  in  mining  warfare,  is  an  instrument 
for  augmenting  small  sounds  coming  through  the 
ground.  The  American  geophone,  which  is  a  highly 
sensitive,  extremely  simple,  and  easily  portable  in- 
strument, is  in  no  sense  an  electrical  device,  resem- 
bling, rather,  the  stethoscope  used  by  physicians  for 
testing  the  lungs.  In  mining  operations  two  geo- 
phones  are  used,  one  for  each  ear,  the  instruments 
being  so  sensitive  that  the  sounds  caused  by  a  fly  walk- 
ing on  the  wooden  support  of  the  geophone  appear 
as  loud  as  the  tramp  of  a  horse  on  the  floor  of  a  stable. 
If  a  sentinel  on  duty  in  an  underground  listening-post 
caught  through  his  geophone  a  sound  which  was  more 
distinct  in,  say,  his  right  ear  than  in  his  left,  he  gently 
shifted  one  of  the  instruments,  inch  by  inch,  until  the 
sound  was  the  same  in  both  ears.  Then,  by  means  of 
a  compass,  he  took  the  magnetic  bearing  of  a  line  per- 
pendicular to  that  passing  through  the  two  geophones, 
which  would  give  the  direction  from  which  the  sound 
came.  Meanwhile  sentries  in  the  other  listening-post-s 
were  doing  the  same  thing,  so  that,  by  the  co-ordina- 
tion of  their  reports  and  by  triangulation,  the  enemy's 
gallery  could  be  located  within  a  few  yards. 

If  the  mining  officer  was  convinced  that  the  enemy 
was  driving  a  gallery  for  the  purpose  of  putting  a  mine 
under  his  position,  two  courses  of  action  would  be 
open  to  him.  He  could  remain  on  the  defensive  and 
check  the  enemy's  advance  by  the  use  of  "camou- 
flets,"  this  being  the  name  applied  to  explosive  charges 


"ESSAYONS"  79 

which  expend  their  force  laterally,  thus  destroying  the 
enemy's  gallery  without  causing  a  crater;  or  he  could 
resort  to  strategy  and  engage  the  enemy's  attention 
at  one  point  by  exploding  camouflets  or  by  working 
noisily,  and  under  cover  of  this  diversion  drive  a  fight- 
ing gallery  toward  his  flank  elsewhere.  If,  instead  of 
being  content  to  remain  on  the  defensive,  the  officer  in 
charge  of  mining  operations  decided  to  assume  the 
offensive,  he  would  engage  the  enemy's  attention  at 
one  point,  either  by  exploding  camouflets  or  by  work- 
ing noisily,  and  at  the  same  time  drive  a  fighting  gal- 
lery toward  his  adversary's  flank.  In  this  latter  case 
the  most  profound  silence  had,  of  course,  to  be  en- 
forced in  the  fighting  branch  if  the  enemy's  geophones 
were  not  to  give  warning  of  its  approach.  No  talking 
was  permitted,  the  men  wore  felt-soled  shoes  and 
worked  with  trowels  instead  of  picks,  and  the  earth 
was  carried  out  in  cars  with  rubber  tires.  So  silently 
were  the  operations  in  the  fighting  branches  conducted 
that  they  would  frequently  break  into  the  enemy  gal- 
leries without  the  slightest  warning,  whereupon  would 
ensue  a  struggle  fought  scores  of  feet  beneath  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth,  by  combatants  armed  with  picks, 
pistols,  bombs,  and  knives,  and  illuminated  only  by 
flickering  miners'  lamps — a  battle  so  weird  and  strange 
in  its  character  and  setting  that  it  seemed  like  the 
creation  of  a  motion-picture  writer's  brain. 

One  of  the  essentials  for  the  success  of  a  mining 
operation  is  the  concealment  of  the  spoil — t.  c,  the  ex- 
cavated earth — which,  if  piled  in  a  heap  at  the  entrance 
to  the  workings,   would  almost  certainly  be  photo- 


8o        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

graphed  by  aerial  observers,  thus  informing  the  enemy, 
as  unmistakably  as  though  it  were  announced  on  a 
placard,  that  a  mining  gallery  was  being  driven.  The 
French,  in  order  to  hide  the  spoil  from  their  mining 
operations,  conceived  the  ingenious  plan  of  digging  a 
shallow  trench,  usually  only  a  few  inches  deep,  and 
lining  it  with  black  paper,  so  that  when  photographed 
from  an  airplane  it  produced  the  effect  of  the  black 
shadow  cast  by  a  trench  of  customary  depth.  They 
would  then  distribute  the  spoil  from  their  subterranean 
galleries  along  the  sides  of  this  false  trench,  so  that  it 
appeared  in  the  photograph  to  have  been  thrown  up 
from  it. 

Dugouts  have  become  such  a  commonplace  in  the 
past  four  years  that  few,  save  the  miners  themselves, 
gave  much  thought  to  or  had  more  than  the  haziest 
ideas  of  the  time,  skill,  and  labor  required  in  their  con- 
struction. Take  yourself,  for  example.  You  have 
read  about  dugouts  and  seen  pictures  of  dugouts  and 
have  probably  had  relatives  or  friends  living  in  dug- 
outs. How  long,  then,  think  you,  would  it  take  a 
force  of  skilled  miners  to  complete  a  front-line  dugout 
large  enough  to  accommodate  a  half-platoon?  (For 
your  information  I  might  explain  that  such  a  dugout 
is  35  feet  long,  9  feet  wide,  and  6  feet  high,  with  17  feet 
of  overhead  cover.)  Using  all  the  men  that  could  be 
employed,  and  working  from  nightfall  until  dawn,  it 
would  require  at  least  three  months  to  complete  such 
a  dugout.  If  in  the  rear  area,  where  the  men  could 
be  worked  continuously  in  shifts,  it  could  be  completed 
in  about  thirty  days. 


NEW  TYPE  OF  SEARCH-LIGHT  USED  IN  THE  AMERICAN'   ARMY 
The  steel  tower  is  collapsible  and  lij;ht  anil.  hcinK  mounteil  on  a  motor-truck,  is  extremely  mobile. 


Constructing  the  screen. 


The  screen  as  it  appeared  upon  completion. 
CAMOLTLAGINX;  A  DIVISION.^L  HEADQUARTERS  IN  THE  TOUL  SECTOR. 


"ESSAYONS"  8i 

A  recent  and  little-advertised  development  of 
trench  warfare  was  the  introduction  of  "mobile 
charges."  These  consisted  of  packages  of  high  explo- 
sive in  ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  pound  sizes,  which  were 
used  by  assaulting  troops  for  destroying  dugouts, 
much  as  depth  bombs  were  used  by  the  navy  to  de- 
stroy submarines.  With  the  increasing  use  of  mobile 
charges  it  became  necessary  to  design  dugouts  which 
would  be  proof  against  them.  In  this  work,  which 
was  carried  on  by  the  Mining  School,  extensive  use 
was  made  of  dogs,  experiments  having  shown  that 
explosions  which  will  rupture  the  lung-tissues  of  a  dog 
will  similarly  affect  those  of  a  human  being.  Thanks 
to  the  knowledge  thus  obtained  at  the  cost  of  canine 
lives,  a  type  of  dugout  construction  was  perfected 
which  afforded  the  occupants  comparative  immunity 
from  mobile  charges  and  hand-grenades.  An  ingenious 
receptacle  for  this  latter  form  of  enemy  visiting-card 
was  the  "bomb-pit,"  which  was  a  sort  of  small  cis- 
tern, built  at  the  foot  of  the  dugout  stairs,  into 
which  a  hand-grenade  would  fall  and  explode  harm- 
lessly. 

Though  it  has  no  direct  relation  to  the  work  of 
the  American  Mining  School,  I  might  mention,  as  an 
illustration  of  the  part  played  by  miners  in  the  great 
conflict,  that  when  the  British  in  191 7  blew  off  the 
entire  top  of  Messines  Ridge  prior  to  their  assault 
on  that  position,  19  mines,  containing  a  total  of 
950,000  pounds  of  ammonal — equivalent  to  1,580,000 
pounds  of  dynamite — were  exploded  simultaneously. 
A  single  one  of  these  mines  contained  95,000  pounds 


82        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

of  ammonal  and  made  a  crater  i86  feet  wide  and  125 
feet  deep. 

Though  few  activities  of  the  Engineers  were  more 
important  than  the  work  of  the  Camouflage  Section, 
and  though  certainly  none  was  more  picturesque  or 
interesting,  it  is  with  some  diffidence  that  I  introduce 
the  subject,  for  I  am  perfectly  aware  that  American 
readers  have  been,  to  make  use  of  a  British  colloquial- 
ism, "jolly  well  fed-up"  on  everything  pertaining  to 
camouflage.  The  point  is,  however,  that  they  have 
been  largely  "fed-up"  on  misinformation.  They  have 
read  hundreds  of  magazine  articles  and  newspaper 
stories  about  fake  trees  and  papier-mache  horses  and 
the  like,  but  of  the  real  work  of  the  Camouflage  Corps 
— which,  as  an  American  general  remarked,  was  "as 
practical  as  machine-guns  and  as  necessary  as  ammu- 
nition"— they  have  heretofore  been  permitted,  for 
quite  obvious  reasons,  to  know  next  to  nothing.  Cer- 
tain camouflage  operations  on  the  American  Front  were 
of  such  vital  importance  to  the  success  of  our  armies 
that,  far  from  acquainting  the  public  with  them,  they 
were  veiled  in  the  profoundest  mystery. 

MiHtary  camouflage  is  a  development  of  the 
Great  War  and  has,  therefore,  no  history  and  little  lit- 
erature. It  differs  from  the  purely  scientific  work  of 
engineering,  which  has  few  variants  and  in  which 
nearly  all  problems  can  be  worked  out  by  formula,  in 
that  it  has  countless  variants  of  light,  color,  and  posi- 
tion, and  each  problem  of  concealment  is  an  individual 
one.    Upon  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the 


"ESSAYONS"  ^3 

war,  much  study  was  devoted  to  French  and  British 
camouflage  methods,  both  in  the  factory  and  in  the 
field.  The  British,  it  was  found,  did  nothing  without 
the  most  careful  scientific  investigation,  which  included 
aerophotography  of  all  materials,  while  the  more  care- 
less and  temperamental  French  relied  rather  on  their 
innate  artistic  sense  of  form  and  color.  By  combining 
the  best  features  of  both  systems  and  strongly  tinctur- 
ing them  with  American  energy,  ingenuity,  and  manu- 
facturing methods,  our  Camouflage  Service  soon  came 
to  be  recognized  as  the  best  equipped  and  most  effi- 
cient in  the  Allied  Armies.  At  Dijon,  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  the  Haute-Marne,  we  estabHshed  a  huge  plant, 
known  as  the  Central  Camouflage  Factory,  where  a 
hundred  soldiers  and  some  nine  hundred  French- 
women were  employed  in  the  production  of  materials, 
while  at  the  Army  Camouflage  School  of  Fort  St. 
Menge,  near  Langres,  practical  instruction  was  given 
in  the  use  of  these  materials  in  the  field. 

When  the  war  ended,  the  American  Camouflage 
Service  consisted  of  a  battalion  of  the  40th  Engineers 
— ^which  was  on  the  point  of  being  expanded  into  a 
regiment — under  the  command  of  Lieutenant-Colonel 
H.  S.  Bennison,  with  Evarts  Tracy,  one  of  the  fore- 
most architects  in  America,  as  major.  Captain  Homer 
Saint- Gaudens,  a  son  of  the  famous  sculptor,  was  in 
charge  of  the  camouflage  work  of  the  Second  Army, 
and  Captain  John  Root,  whose  father  was  architect  of 
the  Colombian  Exposition,  was  in  charge  of  all  camou- 
flage work  for  the  army  artillery,  he  being  largely 
responsible  for  the  remarkable  developments  in  this 


84        THE   ARMY   BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

branch  of  warfare.  The  director  of  the  Camouflage 
School  at  Fort  St.  Menge  was  Lieutenant  Wilford  S. 
Conrow,  the  noted  portrait-painter.  Another  officer 
of  the  battalion,  Lieutenant  Harry  Thrasher,  a  graduate 
of  the  Ecole  des  Beaux- Arts  and  a  winner  of  the  Prix 
de  Rome,  was  killed  while  doing  camouflage  work  at 
Fismes,  as  was  Sergeant  Everett  Herter,  a  son  of  Al- 
bert Herter,  the  artist.  Because  of  the  exacting  na- 
ture of  its  requirements,  the  Camouflage  Service  had, 
perhaps,  a  more  highly  educated  enUsted  personnel 
than  any  other  organization  in  the  army.  Among 
the  men  wearing  the  uniforms  of  privates  in  the  corps 
was  the  landscape-architect  who  laid  out  the  grounds 
of  the  San  Diego  Exposition,  the  stage-manager  for 
Maude  Adams,  the  head  property-man  of  the  Universal 
Film  Company,  and  Louis  Tiffany's  chief  designer. 
One  of  the  instructors  at  the  school  was  a  successful 
osteopath  who  in  his  younger  days  had  been  a  scene- 
painter;  another  was  a  sculptor  whose  statues  may 
be  seen  in  many  American  museums  and  parks. 

Figures  are,  as  a  rule,  dry  reading,  but  they  pro- 
vide the  best  means  I  know  of  giving  some  idea  of  the 
magnitude  of  our  camofleurs'  operations.  During  the 
summer  of  1918  the  Camouflage  Section  used  materials 
per  month  as  follows : 

12,000  fish-nets. 
50,000  pounds  of  wire. 
700,000  gallons  of  paint. 
2,160,000  square  yards  of  poultry-netting  and  approximately 
1,000  acres  of  burlap. 

The  best  and  most  concise  rules  which  I  have  seen 
for  the  erection  of  camouflage  and  for  the  enforcement 


"ESSAYONS"  85 

of  camouflage  discipline  are  contained  in  secret  in- 
structions issued  in  July,  1918,  by  the  commander  of 
the  German  First  Army.     They  read  as  follows: 

CAMOUFLAGE 

Translation  of  a  German  Document  (from  French  IV  Army 
Bulletin,  August  8,  1918) 

ist  Army 
Command  of  the  Aviation  Service 
la-Ib 

Army  Headquarters, 
July  I,  1918. 

I.    Essential  Points  in  the  Construction  of  Positions. 

(a)  General. 

1.  Camouflage  will  be  completed  before  undertaking 

the  work. 

2.  Camouflage  will  be  sufficiently  extensive  in  order 

that  all  the  work  required  may  be  carried  out 
under  its  protection. 

3.  Faulty  installation  will  be  left  in  place  as  dummy 

work  and  be  begun  over  again  at  another  point 
with  the  necessary  prudence. 

(b)  Tracks. 

1.  Tracks  must  be  as  few  as  possible  and  have  a  natural 

appearance.     It  is  best   to  avoid   all    tracks   by 
building  the  position  on  roads  already  in  existence. 

2.  Provide  fixed  access  for  everybody.     If  necessary, 

stake  the  paths  out  by  means  of  wire. 

3.  Extend  indispensable  tracks  beyond  the  position  as 

far  as  the  dummy  work. 

4.  Use  furrows  as  paths,  do  not  go  across  fields. 

5.  Do  not  dump  materials  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 

hood of  the  position. 

(c)  Color  of  the  Camouflage. 

I.  Harmonize  the  color  of  the  camouflage  with  the  ter- 


86        THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

rain.  Green  camouflage  in  meadows,  brown  in 
ploughed  fields,  white  in  quarries. 

2.  The  upper  surface  of  the  camouflage  will  be  alternate 

light  and  dark  tones;  grass,  reeds,  hay,  or  branches 
fixed  in  iron  wire,  etc. 

3.  Renew  the  camouflage  in  proper  time;  the  grass  and 

branches  fade  quickly  and  appear  light  and  not 
dark  on  the  photographs. 

4.  The  position  must  not  extend  partly  over  one  field 

and  partly  over  another,  as  two  fields  are  seldom 
of  the  same  color.  The  furrows  will  be  reproduced 
in  the  camouflage. 

5.  Camouflage  materials,  such  as  the  sod  removed  and 

small  trees,  will  be  taken  at  a  distance  of  at  least 
three  to  four  hundred  meters  from  the  position; 
place  a  dummy  work  at  a  sufficient  distance  in 
order  that  it  does  not  reveal  the  true  position. 

(d)  Forms  of  Camouflage. 

1.  Do  not  raise  the  height  of  the  camouflage  needlessly; 

the  higher  it  is  the  more  shadow  it  throws.  Raise 
it  by  means  of  posts  during  the  work;  bring  it 
down  by  day  and  lay  it  flat  if  possible;  cover  mainly 
the  entries  and  exits. 

2.  Do  not  make  a  heap  of  the  earth  removed  but  scatter 

it  immediately. 

3.  There  must  be  no  fresh  cuts  visible,  as  marked  con- 

trasts result  from  it  between  the  light  and  dark 
surfaces,  the  latter  appearing  as  deep  shadows  on 
the  ground. 

4.  Avoid  regular  shapes  and  rectangular  outlines. 

5.  Do  not  change  natural  shapes.     Positions  in  fills  and 

embankments  must  not  change  the  form  of  the 
fill  or  embankment. 

6.  Use  the  roads,  fills,  embankments,  slopes,  sunken 

roads,  edges  of  woods  to  greater  extent.  Deceive 
the  enemy  by  false  tracks  ending  in  woods. 

II.    Main  Instructions  for  Columns. 

(a)  Resting  columns,  location,  and  nature  of  halting-places. 


"ESSAYONS"  87 

The  most  important  thing  is  that  the  halting- 
places  be  of  irregular  form. 

1.  It  is  best  to  distribute  the  columns  irregularly  under 

trees  of  gardens,  avenues,  roads,  and  courtyards, 
even  if  not  very  dense. 

2.  The  camouflage  of  wagons  or  artillery  pieces  by 

means  of  branches  does  not  secure  them  from  re- 
connaissance by  airplanes,  when  the  column  is  in 
the  open  on  light-colored  ground,  as,  for  example, 
on  dry  roads.  Shadows  enlarge  in  a  surprising 
manner. 

3.  In  villages,  keep  close  to  the  houses,  walls,  enclo- 

sures of  gardens  and  hedges,  but,  if  possible,  with 
irregular  distribution.  The  best  side  is  always  the 
north  side  of  houses,  walls,  etc.,  on  account  of  the 
shadow. 

4.  In  small  courtyards  the  wagons  are  lined  up  one  be- 

side the  other  and  the  tarpaulins  joined  in  order  to 
make  a  roof.  This  appears  as  a  smooth  and  very 
natural  surface  on  the  photograph,  which  does  not 
attract  the  enemy's  attention. 

5.  Lessen  the  tracks,  if  possible.     Do  not  widen  the 

roads  of  approach  uselessly.     Follow  the   track. 
Mark  out  footpaths,  staking  them  out,  if  neces- 
sary, by  wire. 
(6)  Troops  on  foot,  wagons,  and  artillery  columns  on  the 
march. 

1.  Even  at  night  make  more  use  of  tracks  which  are 

generally  dark;  the  columns  can  then  with  diffi- 
culty be  observed  by  airplanes;  on  the  other  hand, 
columns  on  roads  which  appear  light  can  be  seen 
even  at  night. 

2.  Infantry  columns  will  be  divided  into  small  groups 

distributed  in  depth  and  advance  along  the  shady 
side  of  roads. 

3.  When  airplanes  use  light  projectors  at  night  keep  in 

the  shade  of  trees  or  buildings. 

III.  Gener/\l  Rule. 

When  surprised  by  airplanes,  either  by  day  or  by  night,  use 


8S        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

all    natural    shade   provided    by    trees,    embankments, 
houses,  etc.,  and  remain  motionless. 
By  Order  of  the  General  Commanding  the  Army. 

Chief  of  Staff. 
(Signed)  Faupel,  Lieutenant-Colonel. 

So  great,  indeed,  was  the  importance  attached  to 
camouflage  by  the  German  High  Command  that,  dur- 
ing the  last  year  of  the  war,  there  was  attached  to 
every  German  division  a  "security  officer"  whose  duty 
it  was  to  enforce  the  rigid  observance  of  camouflage 
discipHne.  In  many  cases  these  security  officers  kept 
a  watch  on  their  respective  division  from  observation- 
balloons.  They  were  answerable  only  to  Great  Head- 
quarters and  were  empowered,  I  understand,  to  recom- 
mend the  removal  of  all  officers  up  to  and  including 
generals  of  division  for  infraction  of  the  rules  for  cam- 
ouffage  discipline  as  laid  down  by  Ludendorff. 

Camouflage,  it  should  be  kept  in  mind,  is  of  two 
kinds — negative  and  positive.  Negative  camouflage 
consists  in  the  concealment  of  troops,  trenches,  mine- 
shafts,  battery  positions,  ammunition-dumps,  hangars, 
or  other  objects,  knowledge  of  whose  location  must 
be  kept,  if  possible,  from  the  enemy.  Positive  camou- 
flage, on  the  contrary,  consists  in  the  imitation  or  sug- 
gestion of  troops,  trenches,  batteries,  etc.,  in  certain 
locations,  when,  in  reality,  there  is  nothing  of  the  sort 
there,  in  order  to  deceive  and  bewilder  the  enemy.  It 
occasionally  became  necessary,  for  example,  to  con- 
vince the  Germans  that  a  large  troop  movement  was 
in  progress  behind  a  certain  sector  of  the  front,  whereas 
the  real  movement  was  taking  place  scores  of  miles 


"ESSAYONS"  89 

away.  If  it  was  desired  to  suggest  a  movement  by 
rail,  smoke-pots  with  clouds  of  dense  black  smoke  belly- 
ing from  them  were  placed  on  flat  cars  and  moved 
about  from  point  to  point  on  the  miHtary  railways. 
German  aviators,  observing  these  columns  of  smoke 
at  numerous  points  along  the  railways,  naturally 
assumed  that  they  came  from  locomotives  hauHng 
troop-laden  trains  and  promptly  reported  that  large 
bodies  of  troops  were  apparently  being  moved  by  rail 
behind  the  American  lines.  Thereupon  the  German 
commander  would  rush  up  his  reserves  to  resist  the 
attack  which  he  believed  to  be  impending.  Or,  if  it 
was  desired  to  imitate  a  troop  movement  by  road,  the 
camouflage  officer  would  requisition  large  numbers  of 
Fords,  which  would  be  driven  madly  along  the  roads, 
dragging  bundles  of  brush  behind  them.  The  great 
clouds  of  dust  which  thus  suddenly  appeared  on  the 
highways  naturally  suggested  to  the  German  observers 
that  the  verdamnte  Yankees  were  rushing  large  bodies 
of  troops  to  the  front  by  bus  or  motor-truck.  FooHng 
Fritz  was  an  amusing  game  while  it  lasted. 

This  latter  ruse,  I  might  mention  parenthetically, 
was  not  original  with  the  Americans,  for  President 
Diaz,  of  Mexico,  once  related  to  me  how,  when  he  and 
his  little  band  of  patriots  were  being  hotly  pursued  by 
the  French  forces  sent  to  Mexico  to  keep  MaximiHan 
on  his  unstable  throne,  he  ordered  his  vaqueros  to  cut 
bundles  of  mesquite  and  drag  them  behind  them  by 
their  lariats.  It  was  in  the  dry  season,  and  the  dense 
clouds  of  yellow  dust  thus  stirred  up  convinced  the 
French  commander  that  the  Mexican  force  was  far 


90        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

stronger  than  it  really  was.  He  thereupon  precipi- 
tately abandoned  the  pursuit  and  a  few  weeks  later 
General  Diaz,  having  gained  the  breathing-spell  neces- 
sary to  augment  his  forces,  fought  and  won  the  deci- 
sive battle  of  Puebla. 

It  has  frequently  been  said  that  the  camera  does 
not  He,  but  such  assertions  were  made  before  the  Cam- 
ouflage Corps  commenced  its  operations.  Thereafter 
the  negatives  brought  in  by  the  German  airmen  began 
to  prove  so  unreliable  that  the  officers  whose  business 
it  was  to  interpret  them  never  knew  whether  they 
were  telling  the  truth  or  not.  For  example,  it  fre- 
quently became  necessary  after  heavy  bombardments 
in  which  long  stretches  of  entanglements  had  been  de- 
stroyed, to  convince  the  enemy  that  the  wire  had  been 
repaired.  This  illusion  was  accomplished  by  the  sim- 
ple stratagem  of  driving  stakes  into  the  ground  and 
festooning  them  with  fish-nets,  for,  in  a  photograph 
taken  from  the  sky,  fish-nets  thus  arranged  are  indis- 
tinguishable from  wire.  If  such  ruses  are  to  deceive 
the  enemy,  however,  as  much  attention  must  be  paid 
to  detail  in  their  execution  as  David  Belasco  pays  to 
detail  in  the  production  of  a  play.  On  a  certain  British 
sector  a  not  overintelligent  subaltern  was  ordered  by 
his  battalion  commander  to  take  a  working  party  and 
put  out  some  500  yards  of  this  imitation  wire,  as  there 
was  reason  to  believe  that  the  Huns,  thinking  the  sec- 
tor unprotected  by  entanglements,  were  preparing 
to  make  an  attack.  Now  it  is  some  job,  even  for  a 
large  and  well-trained  working  party,  to  put  out  500 
yards  of  wire  in  much  under  a  day.    Heedless  of  such 


"ESSAYONS"  91 

minor  details,  however,  the  Heutenant  gayly  slammed 
in  his  stakes  and  spread  his  fish-nets  as  fast  as  his  men 
could  work,  "wiring"  the  500  yards  of  front  in  little 
more  than  an  hour.  From  high  in  the  blue  German 
airmen  photographed  the  proceeding.  When  one  set 
of  photographs  showed  a  sector  destitute  of  wire  and 
another  set  of  pictures,  taken  an  hour  later,  showed 
the  same  area  with  a  complete  system  of  wire  entangle- 
ments, the  suspicions  of  Von  Hindenburg's  intelligence 
officers  were  naturally  aroused,  and  the  next  morning 
at  dawn  the  Germans  launched  their  attack.  In 
camouflage  work  one  can't  afford  to  be  slipshod. 

The  most  elaborate  camouflage  works  can  be  ren- 
dered utterly  useless,  however,  by  the  carelessness  of  a 
single  soldier,  for  there  is  little  that  escapes  the  eye  of 
the  airman's  camera,  particularly  when  it  was  fitted, 
as  during  the  latter  days  of  the  war,  with  a  stereo- 
scopic attachment.  I  remember  that  in  one  of  the 
Champagne  sectors  the  Germans  had  installed  a  bat- 
tery of  heavy  guns  which  were  so  ingeniously  concealed 
that  the  French  were  unable  to  locate  them.  It  was 
believed  that  they  were  hidden  somewhere  in  a  fringe 
of  woods  along  a  stream,  but  though  there  was  a  con- 
siderable area  of  cultivated  land  beyond  the  woods, 
the  aerophotographs  of  it  showed  nothing  which  would 
suggest  a  path  such  as  would  be  made  by  artillerymen 
going  to  and  from  their  guns.  One  day,  however,  a 
new  batch  of  plates,  upon  being  developed,  showed 
a  dim  gray  line,  faint  as  the  shadow  of  a  hair,  leading 
across  this  cultivated  area  to  a  small  wood  on  the  bank 
of  the  stream,  where  a  battery  might  easily  be  con- 


92        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

cealed.  Upon  studying  an  enlargement  of  the  pic- 
ture the  inteUigence  officers  became  convinced  that 
the  shado\vy  line  on  the  negative  really  represented 
the  trail  left  by  a  soldier  crossing  the  field.  Proceed- 
ing on  the  surmise  that  the  soldier  was  an  artillery- 
man going  up  to  his  gun-position,  the  French  gunners 
registered  on  that  particular  patch  of  woods  the  fol- 
lowing morning,  whereupon  the  fire  from  the  concealed 
battery  abruptly  ceased.  German  prisoners  captured 
a  few  days  later  explained  how  the  secret  of  the  bat- 
tery's position  had  been  kept  so  long.  The  German 
security  officer  had  issued  orders  that  the  artillery- 
men must  under  no  considerations  walk  across  the 
fields  in  order  to  reach  their  guns,  but  that  they  must 
instead  follow  a  much-used  highroad  until  they  reached 
a  bridge  over  the  stream,  drop  from  the  bridge  into 
the  water,  and  wade  up  the  stream  until  opposite  their 
position.  But  one  night  an  artilleryman,  in  a  hurry 
to  reach  his  battery  and  confident  that  the  tracks  left 
by  a  single  man  could  do  no  harm,  took  a  chance  and 
a  short  cut  across  the  forbidden  field.  I  have  told 
you  what  happened  to  his  battery  as  a  result  of  his 
carelessness.  Knowing  something  of  German  dis- 
cipline, I  can  imagine  what  happened  to  him. 

But  it  was  not  often  that  the  Germans  were  caught 
napping,  and  so  ingenious  were  some  of  their  ruses  and 
stratagems,  that  it  required  an  intelligence  officer  with 
the  imagination  of  a  Sherlock  Holmes  to  keep  up  with 
them.  During  the  operations  on  the  Flanders  front 
a  British  aviator  brought  in  some  photographs  of  a 
certain  area  behind  the  German  lines.    The  intelligence 


"ESSAYONS"  93 

officer  whose  duty  it  was  to  scrutinize  them  detected 
a  suspicious  something  which  he  was  convinced  was 
a  cleverly  camouflaged  German  battery,  but  though 
it  was  in  the  midst  of  open  country  there  was  no  sug- 
gestion of  a  path  leading  to  it.  After  studying  the 
photographs  for  several  hours  he  suddenly  exclaimed: 

"  I  have  it !  They  get  up  to  the  guns  on  the  covers 
of  biscuit-boxes." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  his  chief  asked  curiously. 

"It's  as  plain  as  the  nose  on  your  face,"  explained 
the  youngster.  "The  Boche  knows  jolly  well  that  if 
he  walked  across  that  open  ground  his  tracks  would 
show  up  in  our  air  photos.  So  when  he  wants  to  get 
up  to  his  battery  he  gets  a  couple  of  wooden  biscuit- 
box  covers  and  ties  strings  to  them.  He  stands  on  one 
cover  and  throws  the  other  ahead  of  him,  then  stands 
on  that  and  drags  up  the  first  cover  by  means  of  the 
string  and  repeats  the  operation.  Deuced  clever  of 
the  beggars,  I  call  it." 

And,  as  subsequent  events  proved,  the  intelligence 
officer  was  right  in  his  deduction.  That  was  precisely 
what  the  Germans  had  done. 

By  far  the  most  important  work  of  the  Camou- 
flage Corps  was  the  construction  of  "flat-tops"  and 
"false  contours."  A  flat-top,  I  should  perhaps  ex- 
plain, is  a  screen  for  concealing  a  gun  from  enemy 
observation.  It  consists  of  a  fish-net,  usually  37  feet 
square,  into  the  mesh  of  which  are  woven  and  knotted 
narrow  strips  of  burlap  of  colors  to  blend  with  the 
vegetation  of  the  region  where  the  flat-top  is  to  be 
used.      The    interwoven    burlap    becomes    gradually 


94        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

thinner  as  the  edges  of  the  net  are  approached,  so 
that  no  sharply  defined  shadow  may  be  cast.  Every 
piece  of  artillery,  large  and  small,  in  the  A.  E.  F.  had 
its  own  flat-top,  which  accompanied  the  gun  every- 
where, being  stretched  above  it,  like  a  canopy,  when 
the  piece  was  in  action,  at  other  times  being  rolled 
up  and  carried  on  the  limber.  A  somewhat  similar 
device  was  also  provided  for  the  concealment  of  ma- 
chine-guns. It  resembled  one  of  those  huge  umbrellas 
used  in  summer  on  delivery-wagons,  and,  like  an  um- 
brella, it  could  be  quickly  raised  or  lowered.  It  was 
the  intention  of  the  Camouflage  Corps,  had  the  war 
continued,  to  provide  one  for  every  machine-gun. 

A  false  contour  can  best  be  described  as  the  pro- 
longation, by  means  of  burlap  spread  over  a  sort  of 
wire  trellis,  of  a  ridge,  promontory,  or  hiU.  It  being 
desired  to  place  a  battery  at  the  foot  of  a  hill  and  at 
the  same  time  conceal  it  from  enemy  observation — 
which  included  photographs  taken  from  enemy  air- 
planes— the  Camouflage  Corps  would  first  of  all  erect 
a  light  wooden  framework,  something  like  that  of  a 
grape  or  rose  arbor,  but  conforming  to  the  general 
contour  of  the  hill.  Over  this  framework  was  stretched 
wire  netting,  which  supported,  in  turn,  a  finer  mesh 
of  chicken-wire,  into  which  were  woven  strips  of  bur- 
lap dyed  so  as  to  exactly  match  the  color  of  the  hill 
itself.  The  space  beneath  this  burlap  screen  provided 
perfect  concealment  for  anything  up  to  a  battery  or 
a  battalion,  while  so  closely  was  nature  imitated  in 
the  shaping  and  coloring  of  the  false  contour  that 
photographs  taken  by  enemy  flyers  would  show  only 


Photograph  by  Sisnat  Corps.  U-  S.  A. 

As  the  enemy  had  this  road  under  direct  observation,  traffic  along  it  was  concealed  by  means  of 

burlap  screens. 


Photograph  by  Signal  Corps,  U .  S.  A. 

An  overhead  road  screen  made  of  burlap  strips  and  chicken  wire. 
THE  WORK  OF  THE  CAMOUFLAGE  CORPS. 


"ESSAYONS"  95 

an  innocent  hillside,  with  not  enough  vegetation  to 
provide  cover  for  a  sniper.  The  burlap  used  in  the 
construction  of  these  false  contours  was  frequently 
''slashed,"  after  the  fashion  of  foliage-drops  in  theatres, 
and  was  dyed  in  a  great  variety  of  shades,  all  of  which 
were  standardized  and  could  be  ordered  by  number. 
There  were  burlaps  slashed  and  dyed  to  imitate 
ploughed  fields,  grain-fields,  roads,  lawns,  quarries, 
water,  rocks,  and  spring,  summer,  autumn,  and  winter 
foliage;  in  short,  every  phase  of  nature  as  found  in 
the  zone  of  operations. 

The  first  time  I  visited  the  big  warehouse  of  the 
Camouflage  School  at  Fort  St.  Menge,  I  thought  for  a 
moment  that  I  was  back  in  the  old  Eden  Mus^e  which 
used  to  stand  in  West  23d  Street,  for  stacked  against 
the  walls  were  scores  of  lifelike  silhouettes  of  soldiers 
charging  with  fixed  bayonets,  while  the  shelves  were 
lined  with  soldiers'  heads  beautifully  executed  in 
papier-mache.  The  silhouettes,  which  were  of  painted 
canvas  mounted  on  light  wooden  frames,  were  used  in 
the  so-called  "Chinese  attacks" — an  idea  which  we 
borrowed  from  the  British.  When  it  was  necessary  to 
ascertain  how  quickly  the  enemy  could  switch  on  his 
artillery-fire  in  a  certain  sector,  or  the  location  of  his 
batteries  or  machine-guns,  a  hundred  or  more  of  these 
silhouettes  would  be  carried  out  into  No  Man's  Land 
under  cover  of  darkness  and  laid  down  in  front  of  our 
wire  in  such  a  manner  that  they  could  be  pulled  upright 
by  means  of  cords  running  back  to  our  trenches.  Just 
at  daybreak,  at  that  hour  when  objects  are  still  indis- 
tinct and  when  the  nerves  of  the  men  in  the  trenches 


96        THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

are  at  the  greatest  tension,  a  signal  would  be  given, 
the  cords  pulled,  and  a  long  line  of  what  appeared  to 
the  startled  Germans  to  be  charging  Yankees  would 
suddenly  appear  in  the  mist  overhanging  No  Man's 
Land.  Instantly  the  German  trenches  would  crackle 
and  blaze  with  musketry,  the  concealed  batteries  and 
machine-gun  nests  would  betray  their  positions  by 
going  into  action,  and  by  the  time  the  Huns  discovered 
the  hoax  that  had  been  played  upon  them,  our  observ- 
ers had  obtained  the  information  which  they  required. 
Sometimes,  in  order  to  further  chagrin  the  Boche,  the 
silhouettes  would  be  left  standing. 

The  papier-mache  heads  to  which  I  have  already 
referred  were  used  for  the  purpose  of  locating  German 
snipers.  When  a  sniper  became  particularly  annoying 
and  defied  all  attempts  to  locate  him,  the  camouflage 
officer  attached  to  the  division  would  be  summoned. 
Under  his  direction  a  papier-mache  effigy  of  a  soldier's 
head,  steel  helmet  and  all,  made  so  as  to  move  up  and 
down  in  wooden  guides,  would  be  set  up  in  that  part 
of  the  trench  which  the  sniper  had  been  annoying.  At 
intervals  the  head  would  be  slowly  raised  and  lowered, 
so  that  from  the  outside  of  the  trench  it  looked  pre- 
cisely like  a  soldier  peering  cautiously  over  the  parapet. 
Sooner  or  later  the  hidden  marksman  would  send  a 
bullet  through  the  careless  Yankee's  brain.  The  neat 
hole  drilled  through  the  papier-mache  showed  the 
exact  direction  from  which  the  bullet  came,  and  by 
inserting  in  the  hole  a  tiny  telescope,  no  larger  than  a 
pencil,  and  looking  through  it  by  means  of  a  periscope, 
the  loophole  from  which  the  sniper  was  firing  could  be 


"ESSAYONS"  97 

located.  In  one  case  a  sniper  was  found  to  be  firing 
through  a  hole  bored  in  the  heel  of  an  old  boot,  appar- 
ently thrown  carelessly  onto  the  glacis. 

Though  I  have  described  at  some  length  the  use 
of  silhouettes  and  papier-mache  heads  because  they  are 
picturesque  and  interesting  phases  of  modern  war,  it 
should  be  borne  in  mind  that  they  were  designed  to 
meet  exceptional  conditions,  that  they  were  used  in- 
frequently, and  that  they  were  in  no  sense  t>pical  of 
the  enormously  important  work  of  the  Camouflage 
Service. 

In  the  foregoing  pages  I  have  sketched  the  multi- 
tudinous activities  of  the  Engineers  only  in  the  barest 
outHne.  To  attempt  to  compress  the  story  of  their 
achievements  into  the  limits  of  a  single  chapter  would 
be  absurd,  so  I  have  dwelt  only  on  the  most  picturesque 
and  unusual  phases  of  their  work — the  high  spots,  as 
it  were.  There  is  much  that  I  have  left  unsaid,  not 
because  it  is  not  worth  saying,  but  because  I  have  no 
space  in  which  to  set  it  down.  The  stories  which  I 
have  had,  perforce,  to  leave  untold  would  in  themselves 
fill  a  volume.  Among  their  other  accomplishments  the 
Engineers  designed  a  portable  steel  bridge,  made  up  in 
sections  so  that  it  could  be  transported  on  trucks,  and 
so  designed  that  it  could  be  bolted  together,  which 
could  sustain  a  load  of  thirty  tons  over  a  span  of  ninety 
feet.  These  bridges  were  used  all  along  the  fighting 
front,  as  our  forces  advanced,  to  replace  the  bridges 
destroyed  by  the  retreating  Germans.  They  had  under 
construction,   when   the  war  ended,  a   raft  designed 


98        THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

for  the  transportation  of  the  heaviest  pieces  of  mobile 
artiller}^  in  existence — by  means  of  which,  had  neces- 
sity required  it,  we  could  have  ferried  our  giant  howit- 
zers across  the  Rhine.  The  portable  floating  foot- 
bridges— ^passarelles — which  our  troops  used  in  crossing 
the  Meuse  and  the  adjacent  canals  under  fire  were  in- 
vented by  an  officer  of  Engineers.  The  Engineers 
threw  one  of  them  across  the  Canal  de  I'Est,  near  Dun- 
sur-Meuse,  under  a  shell  and  machine-gun  fire  so  heavy 
that  it  was  twenty-six  hours  before  the  infantry  could 
cross  it.  The  Engineers  have  invented  a  very  ingenious 
and  remarkable  device  whereby  search-lights  can  be 
operated  from  a  distance,  thus  making  it  possible  for 
an  officer  to  control  a  battery  of  scattered  search-lights 
just  as  the  man  in  a  signal-tower  controls,  by  means 
of  levers,  the  switches  in  a  railway  yard.  The  corps 
has  perfected  a  blasting  machine  for  demolition  work 
which  destroyed  ruins  faster  than  the  Huns  could 
make  them.  Military  operations  are  absolutely  de- 
pendent upon  maps  and  plenty  of  them.  The  En- 
gineers met  the  demand  by  erecting  and  operating  in 
France  a  larger  map-producing  plant  than  was  pos- 
sessed by  France  herself  or  any  of  the  Allies.  In  order 
to  provide  a  more  rapid  means  of  obtaining  topograph- 
ical information.  Major  James  W.  Bagley,  of  the  En- 
gineers, invented  an  aerial  cartograph  or  mapping 
camera,  which  takes  three  pictures  at  a  time  from  an 
airplane,  mapping  a  strip  of  territory  three  and  a  half 
miles  wide  at  5,000  feet  elevation,  the  series  of  pictures 
thus  taken  forming  a  mosaic  map  of  the  country  over 
which  the  airplane  has  flown  which  is  as  accurate  and 


"ESSAYONS"  99 

far  more  detailed  than  a  map  drawn  from  surveys. 
This  invention  opens  up  an  entirely  new  field  for  the 
use  of  airj^lanes  and  a  possible  revolution  in  former 
methods  of  mapping.  The  Engineers  likewise  produced 
portable  machine,  blacksmith,  and  lithographic  shops, 
the  capacity  of  the  portable  lithographic  truck-sets 
furnished  the  29th  Engineers — the  Surveying  and 
Printing  Regiment — being  greater  than  that  of  the 
permanent  map-reproduction  plant  of  the  Geological 
Survey  in  Washington.  Mobile  sterilizers,  water- 
tanks,  job-presses,  photographic  laboratories,  derricks, 
pile-drivers,  road-sprinklers,  and  oilers  were  all  asked 
for  by  the  A.  E.  F.,  whereupon  the  Engineers  designed 
them  and  shipped  them  to  France. 

I  fully  realize  that  what  I  have  written  in  the 
preceding  pages  contains  no  mention  of  the  supply 
work  performed  by  the  corps  in  the  United  States, 
which  was  so  enormous  that  27  per  cent  of  all  the  ton- 
nage shipped  to  France  up  to  the  signing  of  the  Armis- 
tice was  from  or  for  the  Engineers.  Furthermore,  I 
have  touched  only  here  and  there  upon  the  activities 
of  the  corps  oversea,  where  in  addition  to  the  enor- 
mous amount  of  engineering  work  which  had  to  be 
done  with  the  armies,  including  fighting,  the  construc- 
tion of  fortifications,  and  the  building  of  roads,  rail- 
ways, and  bridges,  it  executed  an  incredible  amount  of 
general  construction,  such  as  docks  and  warehouses, 
railroad  yards  and  railroad  bridges,  camps  and  hospi- 
tals, balloon  sheds  and  airplane  hangars,  not  to  men- 
tion the  installation  of  water,  heating,  lighting,  and 
sanitary  systems.     And,   bear  in  mind,   the  oversea 


loo      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

activities  of  the  Engineers  were  not  confined  to  France, 
but  extended  to  England,  Italy,  Russia,  and  Siberia. 

^^  Essay ons  /"  The  more  I  have  seen  of  the  work 
of  the  Engineers,  the  more  appropriate  seems  their 
motto. 

^^ Essayons  !^^  There  is  apparently  nothing  that 
these  men  with  the  castles  on  their  collars  will  not 
essay.    And  everything  they  essay  they  accomplish. 


Ill 

THE  GAS-MAKERS 

WERE  you  to  grow  up  with  a  boy  who  eventually 
became  widely  talked  about,  watching  him  pass 
from  knickerbockers  to  trousers  and  from  youthful 
shyness  to  burly  aggressiveness,  the  chances  are  that 
you  would  follow  his  career  with  an  almost  proprietary 
interest,  and  that  when  you  came  upon  his  picture  in 
The  World^s  Work  or  The  Police  Gazette,  according  to 
whether  he  had  become  famous  or  notorious,  you  would 
display  it  to  your  friends,  explaining  proudly:  "WTiy, 
I've  known  him  ever  since  he  was  a  youngster.  I  al- 
ways felt  sure  that  he  would  attract  attention  some 
day." 

Such,  in  a  manner  of  speaking,  has  been  my 
acquaintance  with  poison-gas,  or  toxic-gas,  as  the 
chemists  call  it.  I  was  in  the  Ypres  salient,  on  the 
British  front,  when  the  first  gas  attack  in  the  history 
of  warfare  was  launched  against  the  Africans  and 
Canadians  on  April  22,  191 5,  and  that  night,  in  the 
hospitals,  I  saw  the  earliest  victims  of  gas  warfare, 
gasping  on  their  cots  like  fish  thrown  on  the  bank  to 
die.  On  several  occasions  during  the  months  which 
followed  I  again  encountered  the  malign  creature — 
on  the  Yser,  in  the  Champagne,  in  Alsace,  and  on  the 
Isonzo — and  on  each  succeeding  occasion  it  was  more 
threatening  and  was  causing  greater  concern.  So 
that  when,  after  the  United  States  had  been  at  war  a 
year  or  more,  I  visited  the  great  arsenal  at  Edgewood, 


I02      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

on  the  shores  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  and  was  shown  the 
vast  plants  devoted  to  the  production  of  chlorine, 
chlorpicrin,  phosgene,  mustard,  and  other  deadly 
gases,  and  caught  the  familiar  nauseous  odor,  I  felt  as 
though  I  were  renewing  an  old  and  undesirable  ac- 
quaintance. 

I  doubt  if  the  Germans  started  the  war  with  the 
intention  of  utihzing  poison-gas,  for  they  did  not  in- 
troduce it  until  nine  months  after  the  beginning  of 
hostilities,  and  even  then  they  apparently  failed  to 
realize  the  terrible  potency  of  their  new  weapon,  for 
they  waited  twenty-four  hours  before  following  it  up 
with  a  bayonet  attack,  evidently  fearful  that  the  gas 
had  not  dissipated.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  gas  dis- 
sipated within  thirty-five  or  forty  minutes  after  its 
release,  though  in  that  time  it  annihilated  80  per  cent 
of  the  French,  Canadians,  and  Senegalese  opposing  it. 
Had  the  Germans  taken  instant  and  vigorous  advantage 
of  the  confusion  and  dismay  created  by  their  unex- 
pected use  of  chlorine,  they  could  unquestionably  have 
broken  the  Allied  front,  pushed  through  to  the  Channel 
ports,  and  changed  the  entire  course  of  the  war.  (I 
might  mention,  parenthetically,  that  the  British  had 
been  warned  by  a  deserter,  a  week  before,  that  the 
Germans  were  making  preparations  for  a  gas  attack, 
but  they  did  not  believe  him.)  But  the  men  in  the 
spiked  helmets  failed  to  take  advantage  of  the  Allies' 
temporary  panic;  the  latter  had  time  to  improvise  a 
means  of  defense,  and  the  opportunity  of  the  Germans 
to  win  the  war  by  the  use  of  gas  was  gone.  So  effec- 
tively, indeed,  did  the  Allies  turn  the  new  weapon  to 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  103 

their  own  uses  that,  before  the  close  of  19 16,  the  Ger- 
mans were  putting  out  feelers  for  the  purpose  of  bringing 
about  a  cessation  of  this  form  of  warfare.  Then  the 
United  States  entered  the  war,  whereupon  all  the  re- 
sources of  American  laboratories  and  chemical  manu- 
factories were  directed  toward  the  production  of  gas 
in  quantities  of  which  the  Germans  had  never  dreamed. 
But,  even  had  the  Allies  been  aware  of  Germany's 
intention  to  make  use  of  toxic-gases  for  military  pur- 
poses, they  would  still  have  been  at  an  enormous  dis- 
advantage, because,  as  a  direct  result  of  her  policy 
of  giving  government  assistance  to  certain  industries, 
Germany  had  several  huge  gas-plants,  connected  with 
her  dye  manufactories,  in  operation  when  the  war  be- 
gan. Now  phosgene,  which  is  comparatively  easy  to 
produce,  is  used  extensively  in  the  manufacture  of  dyes, 
which  explains  why  the  Germans  had  a  virtual  mo- 
nopoly of  it  when  they  decided  to  utilize  it  for  the 
promotion  of  dying  instead  of  dyeing.  The  German 
Government,  it  should  be  remembered,  had  for  years 
subsidized  the  entire  chemical  industry  of  the  empire, 
so  that  when  the  war  began  it  had  at  its  disposal 
scores  of  establishments  devoted  to  the  production  of 
dyestuffs  and  pharmaceutical  preparations,  in  the  pro- 
duction of  which  certain  toxic-gases  are  an  important 
factor,  which  were  converted,  literally  overnight,  to 
military  purposes.  Though  there  is  no  data  regarding 
the  German  gas  production  available,  it  was  probably 
in  the  neighborhood  of  30  tons  a  day.  It  ma}-  have 
reached  50  tons,  but  certainly  not  more.  Though  the 
English,   realizing  how  desperate  was  the  situation, 


I04      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

utilized  ever>'  facility  they  could  command,  their  total 
daily  output  of  toxic-gases  never  went  above  30  tons. 
The  best  the  French  could  do  was  much  below  this. 
Yet  at  Edgewood,  durmg  the  months  of  September 
and  October,  19 18,  when  the  plant  had  been  in  opera- 
tion only  a  few  months,  the  output  averaged  140  tons 
a  day  and  would  have  gone  much  higher  had  the  war 
continued.  In  other  words,  Edgewood  Arsenal  alone 
produced  nearly  twice  as  much  gas  per  day  as  Germany, 
France,  and  England  together. 

Now  I  wish  to  lay  special  emphasis  on  the  fact 
that  when  the  United  States  decided  to  manufacture 
gas,  and  to  manufacture  it  in  hitherto  undreamed-of 
quantities,  we  were  embarking  on  strange  and  un- 
charted seas.  We  manufactured  almost  everything 
else  under  the  sun,  but  of  the  production  of  these  toxic- 
gases  we  knew  Httle  save  in  theory,  because  virtually 
their  only  commercial  value  was  in  the  making  of  cer- 
tain dyes  and  chemicals,  for  which  we  had  depended 
almost  wholly  on  Germany.  It  was  a  new  game  which 
we  had  to  learn — and  to  learn  quickly.  We  found 
ourselves  in  the  position  of  a  baseball-player  who  is 
unexpectedly  called  upon  to  bowl  in  a  game  of  cricket 
on  which  the  championship  depends.  But  when  word 
went  out  from  Washington  that  chemists  were  needed 
to  beat  the  Germans  at  their  own  game,  the  masters 
of  the  retort  and  the  test-tube  left  their  classrooms 
and  closed  their  laboratories  and  from  every  corner  of 
the  republic  came  flocking  to  the  colors.  I  am  using 
no  mere  figure  of  speech  when  I  assert  that  the  mam- 
moth gas  industry  which  was  built  up  from  nothing 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  105 

in  less  than  a  twelvemonth,  knowledge  of  which  was 
without  question  largely  contributory  to  breaking 
down  the  German  morale,  was  the  work  of  American 
college  professors.  Some  one,  an  Englishman,  if  I 
remember  rightly,  once  referred  to  Germany  as  "the 
land  of  damned  professors."  WTien  their  batteries 
and  battalions  were  sent  reeling  back  by  x\merican- 
made  gas,  the  Germans  must  have  felt  like  applying 
the  same  term  to  the  United  States. 

Notwithstanding  the  remarkable  standard  of 
efficiency  which  it  ultimately  attained,  the  Chemical 
Warfare  Service,  or  the  Gas  Service,  as  it  was  originally 
called,  passed  through  a  checkered  and  stormy  forma- 
tive period.  By  the  close  of  191 7,  when  we  had  al- 
ready been  at  war  for  nine  months,  there  was  hardly  a 
branch  of  the  American  Army  which  did  not  have  a 
finger  in  the  affairs  of  gas  warfare.  The  manufacture 
of  masks  was  under  the  direction  of  the  Medical  Corps. 
Gas  and  shell  production  w^as  in  the  hands  of  the 
Ordnance  Department.  Alarm  devices  were  produced 
by  the  Signal  Corps.  The  gas  and  flame  troops  formed 
the  30th  Regiment  of  Engineers.  Field-training  was 
directed  by  the  Sanitary  Corps.  Research  work,  an 
extremely  important  phase,  was  carried  out  by  the 
Bureau  of  Mines,  a  branch  of  the  Department  of  the 
Interior.  And,  to  complete  the  decentralization,  ar- 
rangements were  being  made  to  form  a  chemical  service 
section  of  the  National  Army  for  the  purpose  of  con- 
ducting gas  operations  overseas. 

There  is  nothing  to  be  gained  by  describing  the 
long   series  of   misunderstandings,   controversies,  and 


io6      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

recriminations  which  constituted  the  history  of  gas 
warfare  during  the  early  months  of  191 8.  It  is  not 
pleasant  reading.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  de- 
moralization resulting  from  this  divided  authority, 
taken  in  conjunction  with  the  introduction  by  the 
Germans  of  mustard  and  other  new  gases,  and  the  dif- 
ficulty which  the  English  were  experiencing  in  obtain- 
ing a  sufficient  supply  of  chlorine,  brought  about  a 
situation  which  caused  grave  alarm  to  all  who  were 
famihar  with  the  situation  in  Europe.  The  two  chief 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  a  complete  reorganization  of 
the  service  were  the  Ordnance  Department,  the  chief 
of  which  was  unwilling  to  permit  all  of  the  gas  activities 
of  Ordnance  to  be  controlled  by  an  external  author- 
ity, and  the  Bureau  of  Mines,  which  refused  to  permit 
its  chemists  and  its  organization  to  be  absorbed  by  the 
War  Department.  Though  at  that  time  it  was  im- 
possible to  modify  the  attitude  of  the  Bureau  of  Mines 
in  regard  to  its  control  of  research,  the  Chief  of  Ord- 
nance did  his  best  to  improve  conditions  within  his 
own  department  by  placing  Colonel  William  H.  Walker, 
assistant  director  of  the  Gas  Service  and  former  pro- 
fessor of  chemical  engineering  at  the  Massachusetts 
Institute  of  Technology,  in  complete  control  of  gas 
production,  including  the  operation  of  the  great 
plant  at  Edgewood,  the  branch  factories  throughout 
the  country,  and  the  experimental  field  at  Lakehurst, 
New  Jersey.  The  manner  in  which  this  coUege  pro- 
fessor brought  order  out  of  chaos  at  Edgewood  and 
its  related  plants,  directed  the  activities  of  7,000  sol- 
diers and  8,000  civilian  workmen,  settled  labor  troubles, 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  107 

obtained  material,  completed  and  put  into  operation 
the  largest  toxic-gas  plant  in  existence,  and,  by  his 
insistence  on  manufacturing  at  Edgewood  all  types 
of  gases,  including  a  large  proportion  of  the  basic 
chlorine,  made  the  government  independent  of  manu- 
facturers and  contractors,  was  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable accomplishments  of  the  war. 

In  May,  1918,  Major-General  William  L.  Sibert, 
Corps  of  Engineers,  who  had  commanded  the  First 
Division  in  France,  was  appointed  by  the  President  as 
director  of  the  Gas  Service  for  the  express  purpose  of 
reorganizing  that  service  and  placing  it  on  a  footing 
commensurate  with  the  importance  it  was  now  realized 
to  have.  General  Sibert  promptly  took  the  position 
that,  if  he  was  to  assume  this  responsibility,  there 
could  be  no  further  divided  control;  all  gas  production 
and  all  research  work  must  be  in  his  hands.  Ensued 
then  lengthy  discussions  between  the  War  Department 
and  the  Department  of  the  Interior,  enlivened  by  news- 
paper articles  and  speeches  in  Congress,  as  to  whether 
the  research  chemists  of  the  Bureau  of  Mines  should 
pass  under  military  control,  but  General  Sibert's  atti- 
tude remained  unshaken  and,  on  July  13,  1918,  all 
branches  of  the  work  connected  with  gas  warfare  were 
placed  under  his  control  as  chief  of  the  Chemical  War- 
fare Service,  henceforward  a  complete  and  separate 
branch  of  the  army. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  none  of 
the  toxic-gases  used  by  the  warring  nations,  with  the 
exception  of  chlorine,  had  been  prepared  in  this  coun- 
try except  on  a  very  small  scale  and  as  laboratory  ex- 


io8      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

periments.  The  War  Department  was  faced,  therefore, 
with  the  immediate  problem,  not  only  of  developing 
methods  for  the  manufacture  of  these  gases  on  a  large 
scale,  but  also  of  putting  these  methods  into  execution. 
Gases,  the  preparation  of  which  even  in  very  small 
quantities  was  prohibited  in  many  laboratories  on 
account  of  their  highly  dangerous  character  and  which, 
for  the  same  reason,  the  Railroad  Administration  re- 
fused to  transport  except  by  special  trains,  were  now  to 
be  produced  by  the  thousands  of  tons.  But  how? 
There  was  no  suitable  machinery  for  the  purpose  to 
be  had  in  the  United  States;  everything  must  be  de- 
signed and  built  to  order.  And  where  were  the  thou- 
sands of  workmen  who  would  be  required  to  come 
from?  Why  should  a  man  exchange  the  safety  of  a 
shipyard,  where  he  was  getting  undreamed-of  wages, 
for  the  perils  of  making  poison-gas?  It  was  indeed  a 
stupendous  problem  which  the  government  was  facing. 
Yet  there  was  no  time  to  mull  the  question  over,  as  a 
judge  mulls  over  a  point  of  law,  for  every  day  brought 
word  of  an  increasing  use  of  gas  by  the  Germans. 

It  was  the  original  intention  to  interest  existing 
chemical  firms  in  the  manufacture  of  the  required 
gases,  with  the  hope  of  obtaining  from  them  the  entire 
supply  required.  As  the  project  developed,  however, 
difficulties  arose  which  prevented  the  carrying  out  of 
this  programme.  The  director-general  of  railroads 
ruled,  as  I  have  just  said,  that  the  gases  could  only  be 
transported  by  special  train  movement,  and  this  would 
entail  great  difficulty,  delay,  and  expense.  More  seri- 
ous  objections   were   encountered,   however,    in   the 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  109 

efforts  to  enlist  the  co-operation  of  the  chemical  manu- 
facturers. The  methods  for  the  production  of  toxic- 
gases  on  a  large  scale  were  c|uite  unknown,  the  manu- 
facturers explained,  and  to  discover  and  develop  satis- 
factory processes  would  necessarily  require  extended  in- 
vestigations. The  companies  also  realized  that  there 
would  be  great  danger  to  the  lives  of  those  employed 
in  the  work,  that  fatalities  were  almost  certain  to  re- 
sult, and  they  were  unwilling  to  run  the  risk  of  the 
interminable  lawsuits  which  are  usually  incidental  to 
the  settlement  of  such  cases.  Moreover,  only  a  limited 
number  of  firms  had  the  personnel  and  the  experience 
necessary  to  undertake  the  difficult  problems  involved, 
and  these  firms  were  already  crowded  with  war  work 
and  were  unwilling  to  assume  additional  responsibility, 
particularly  of  such  a  character.  And,  finally,  it  was 
recognized  that  the  manufacture  of  toxic-gases  would 
be  limited  to  the  duration  of  the  war,  and  that  the 
processes  involved,  as  well  as  the  plants  necessarj^  for 
carrying  out  these  processes,  would  have  little  value 
after  the  war  was  over. 

Meanwhile  the  Ordnance  Department  had  ap- 
proved of  a  plan  to  utilize  a  portion  of  a  tract  compris- 
ing 35,000  acres,  near  Aberdeen,  Maryland,  on  Chesa- 
peake Bay,  which  had  just  been  acquired  by  the  govern- 
ment for  a  proving-ground,  for  erecting  a  suitable  plant 
for  filling  shell  with  poison-gas — though  at  that  time 
it  had  not  been  determined  where  the  gas  itself  was  to 
come  from.  As  soon  as  it  became  evident  that  the 
necessary  quantities  of  gas  could  not  be  obtained  from 
private  firms,  the  War  Department  decided  to  erect 


no   THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

and  operate  its  own  gas-plants  on  a  peninsula  of  the 
Aberdeen  Reservation,  known  as  Gunpowder  Neck. 
This  peninsula,  consisting  of  about  3,500  acres,  which 
was  admirably  suited  for  the  purpose  by  reason  of  its 
remoteness  from  centres  of  population,  its  security,  and 
its  facilities  for  rail  and  water  transportation,  was 
named  Edgewood  Arsenal. 

Only  those  who  saw  the  low-lying,  swamp-lined 
shores  of  Gunpowder  Neck  during  the  winter  and  spring 
of  1917-1918  can  fully  picture  the  obstacles  with  which 
our  gas-makers  were  confronted.  Have  you  ever  seen 
a  Virginia  road  after  the  spring  rains  ?  Yes  ?  Imagine, 
then,  this  Virginian  clay  mixed  with  Mexican  adobe  and 
diluted  with  New  Orleans  molasses  and  you  will  have 
a  slight  idea  of  the  nature  of  the  soil  over  which  enor- 
mous quantities  of  material  had  to  be  hauled  and  on 
which  was  erected  the  greatest  manufactory  of  poison- 
gas  in  the  world.  It  may  be  recalled,  moreover,  that 
the  winter  of  1917-1918  was  the  severest  in  the  mem- 
ory of  the  oldest  inhabitant.  For  weeks  on  end  the 
shores  of  the  Chesapeake  resembled  the  shores  of 
Greenland,  but,  in  spite  of  cold  and  mud  and  rain,  in 
spite  of  apparently  insurmountable  difhculties  in  ob- 
taining building  materials  and  in  securing  transporta- 
tion for  those  materials  on  the  congested  railways,  in 
spite  of  strikes  and  labor  troubles  of  every  kind,  the 
work  forged  steadily  ahead,  officers  and  men  working 
themselves  as  a  negro  teamster  works  his  mules.  Scores 
of  miles  of  roads  were  built  and  metalled,  a  network  of 
railways  was  laid  down,  and  over  them  snorted  panting 
locomotives  hauling  endless  caravans  of  freight-cars. 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  m 

The  building  sites  were  illuminated  by  hundreds  of 
arc-lights,  the  working  force  was  divided  into  shifts, 
and  the  reservation  resounded  both  night  and  day  to 
the  creak  of  derricks,  the  clatter  of  riveters,  and  the 
rasp  of  saws.  A  total  of  558  buildings  were  constructed 
on  the  grounds  of  the  arsenal,  including,  in  addition  to 
the  huge  structures  of  steel  and  concrete  which  com- 
prised the  filling  and  the  various  chemical  plants, 
36  cantonments  with  quarters  for  8,400  men,  3  field- 
hospitals,  a  base  hospital  with  more  than  400  beds, 
bunk-houses  for  civilian  workmen,  officers'  barracks, 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Knights  of  Columbus  huts,  and  one  of 
the  most  completely  equipped  laboratories  in  the  coun- 
try. Edgewood  is,  in  reality,  a  collection  of  great 
manufacturing  plants,  with  all  that  implies  in  housing, 
sanitation,  heating,  storage,  hospitalization,  and  other 
agencies.  And  the  work  was  done  by  men  every  one 
of  whom,  from  the  commanding  officer  down,  was  in 
civil  life  when  the  war  began.  Not  a  single  officer 
or  man  of  the  Regular  Army  had  any  responsibility 
for  the  construction  or  operation  of  Edgewood  Ar- 
senal from  the  day  that  the  ex-professor  of  chemistry. 
Colonel  Walker,  assumed  command,  until  its  opera- 
tions were  terminated  by  the  Armistice. 

Any  one  who  has  had  practical  experience  in 
manufacturing  well  knows  that  it  is  usually  a  long 
step  from  laboratory  experimentation  to  factory  pro- 
duction, a  step  which  it  often  takes  months  and  some- 
times years  to  make  and  which  is  frequently  beset 
with  all  manner  of  difficulties  and  problems.  But 
there  was  no  such  time  at  the  disposal  of  the  Edge- 


112      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

wood  gas-makers.  In  all  their  experiments  they  were 
never  permitted  to  slack  up  on  production.  The  need 
was  too  vital.  Our  armies  in  France  were  clamoring 
for  gas,  gas,  gas.  There  were  no  existing  models  for 
much  of  the  machinery  needed,  but  the  corps  of  bril- 
liant young  men  with  whom  Colonel  Walker  had  sur- 
rounded himself  invented  as  they  went  along.  Yet, 
as  a  result  of  the  experiments  at  Edgewood,  numerous 
new  and  more  economical  processes  were  discovered. 
The  slow  and  dangerous  water-cooling  method  of  pro- 
ducing phosgene,  as  followed  in  Europe,  was  supplanted 
by  an  entirely  new  system  and  a  plant  was  perfected 
which  could  turn  out  forty  tons  of  this  gas  every 
twenty-four  hours.  When  the  Edgewood  plant  was  put 
into  operation  the  government  was  paying  one  dollar 
and  fifty  cents  a  pound  for  phosgene,  but  when  the 
Armistice  was  signed  we  were  manufacturing  it  at  the 
theretofore  unheard-of  price  of  ten  cents  per  pound 
and  would  have  brought  it  to  an  even  lower  figure  had 
the  production  been  continued.  The  systems  devised 
for  filling,  painting,  and  marking  the  shell  were  mar- 
vels of  mechanical  ingenuity.  These  discoveries  were 
not  intended  for  commerce.  They  were  the  result  of 
patriotic  effort  on  the  part  of  the  workmen  to  see  the 
nation  excel  in  the  particular  thing  in  which  it  was 
then  engaged — war.  They  were  the  outgrowth  of  im- 
patience over  slow  and  dangerous  methods,  or  a  desire 
to  do  the  work  in  hand  a  little  better  or  a  little  more 
quickly  than  it  had  been  done  before — a  quality  in- 
herent in  the  American  character. 

It  is  a  remarkable  commentary  on  the  efficiency 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  113 

of  the  Edgewood  organization  that  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  the  manufacture  of  poison-gases  in  quan- 
tity was  a  new  industry  in  the  United  States,  that  the 
machinery  was  improvised  or  designed  from  the  ground 
up,  that  the  workmen  were  without  previous  experi- 
ence— many  of  the  drafted  men,  mind  you,  were  fresh 
from  ofhces,  stores,  and  farms — and  that  they  were 
engaged  in  a  peculiarly  hazardous  occupation,  only 
four  fatalities  were  directly  traceable  to  poisoning  by 
gas.  This  should  not  be  construed  as  minimizing  the 
peril  attached  to  the  work,  however,  for,  though  every 
possible  precaution  was  observed  in  the  construction 
and  operation  of  the  plants,  there  were  925  casualties 
between  June  and  December,  19 18,  of  which  674  were 
due  to  mustard-gas.  During  the  month  of  August, 
when  the  gases  were  most  volatile  as  a  result  of  the 
excessive  heat  (during  that  month  the  mercur}^  stood 
at  106  degrees  for  three  days  in  succession),  and  when 
the  weather  caused  the  soldiers  to  somewhat  relax 
their  precautions,  the  hospitals  were  on  several  days 
filled  at  the  rate  of  3^2  per  cent  of  the  entire  force  of 
the  mustard-gas  plant,  though  this  rate  of  casualties 
was  not  maintained,  of  course,  throughout  the  entire 
month.  I  might  add  that  several  of  the  divisions  which 
took  part  in  the  St.  Mihiel  offensive  sustained  a  con- 
siderably smaller  percentage  of  losses,  which  shows 
that  the  dangers  of  the  war  were  not  entirely  monopo- 
lized by  the  men  who  served  in  France. 

Long  before  the  chemical  plants  were  completed  it 
became  evident  that  civilian  labor  could  not  be  utilized 
in  their  operation.    Not  only  was  such  labor  difficult 


114      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

to  obtain,  but  the  wages  were  abnormally  high,  the 
work  was,  as  a  whole,  extremely  inefficient,  and  it  was 
virtually  impossible  to  maintain  the  discipline  and 
secrecy  imperative  to  the  success  of  the  undertaking. 
Moreover,  it  was  found  that  such  civilian  labor  as  was 
available  could  not  be  depended  upon  to  work  in  the 
chemical  plants  because  of  the  danger  attending  the 
manufacture  of  such  highly  poisonous  materials.  It 
was  decided,  therefore,  to  utilize  enlisted  men.  As  the 
project  progressed,  increasing  numbers  of  soldiers  from 
the  National  Army  were  detailed  to  the  arsenal,  the 
force  reaching  a  strength  of  7,400  at  one  time.  The 
soldiers,  no  matter  how  much  they  disliked  the  work, 
could  not  quit  like  the  civilian  laborers;  they  had  tie 
ojDtion  but  to  obey  orders,  and  so,  morning  after  morn- 
ing, they  rose  at  the  summons  of  the  bugles  in  the  dim 
light  of  early  dawn,  hurried  through  their  breakfasts  a-t 
the  long  tables  in  the  mess-halls,  and  marched  to  thei-r 
respective  tasks,  whether  making  chlorine,  chlorpicrin, 
phosgene,  or  mustard  gas,  filling  or  painting  shell, 
working  in  the  great  refrigerating-plants  through  which 
the  shell  were  passed  to  be  chilled  before  filHng,  load- 
ing trains  and  boats,  building  roads,  digging  ditches, 
or  firing  boilers — all  for  thirty  dollars  a  month.  To 
the  men  who  wore  the  blue-and-yellow  hat-cords  of 
the  Chemical  Warfare  Service,  the  men  who  performed 
their  dangerous  work  without  advertisement  and  with- 
out public  recognition,  is  due  the  gratitude  of  the  na- 
tion. 

The  chief  activities  of  the  great  arsenal  on  the 
Chesapeake  consisted,  as  I  believe  I  have  already  men- 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  115 

tioned,  of  the  manufacture  of  four  types  of  toxic-gas — 
chlorine,  chlorpicrin,  phosgene,  and  mustard — and 
the  filling  of  shell  with  these  gases.  Now  I  have  not 
the  slightest  intention  of  entering  upon  a  technical 
account  of  the  complicated  processes  by  which  these 
gases  were  produced.  Though  no  doubt  interesting 
to  chemists,  it  would  make  dry  reading  for  others. 
It  will  suffice  for  the  purposes  of  this  book  to  sketch 
in  briefest  outline,  and  in  simple  words,  the  chief  char- 
acteristics of  the  principal  toxic-gases  and  the  methods 
followed  in  their  manufacture. 

Chlorine,  which  is  the  first  gas  the  Germans  used 
and  which  is  an  important  constituent  of  nearly  all  the 
other  toxic-gases,  is  derived  from  ordinar}'  table-salt. 
It  is  prepared  by  passing  a  current  of  electricity  through 
a  solution  of  salt,  by  which  process  chlorine  is  liberated 
and  caustic  soda  formed.  At  ordinary  temperatures 
chlorine  is  a  greenish-yellow  gas  of  strong,  suffocating 
odor,  but  by  means  of  cold  and  pressure  it  can  be 
readily  condensed  to  a  liquid  and  is  usually  shipped  in 
that  form,  stored  in  strong  cylinders.  The  apparatus 
in  which  the  salt  is  decomposed  by  the  electric  current 
is  known  as  a  cell.  The  salt,  upon  arrival  at  the  arsenal, 
was  taken  to  the  brine  building  and  dumped  into  large 
concrete  tanks  kept  partially  filled  with  water,  the 
resulting  brine  being  drawn  off,  purified,  and  pumped 
to  the  cell-house  as  needed.  The  interior  of  this 
building  was  filled  with  cells,  nearly  4,000  in  all, 
through  which  was  passed  a  direct  current  of  approxi- 
mately 260  volts.  The  chlorine  thus  extracted  from 
the  brine  was  liquefied  by  compressing  it  through  the 


ii6      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

agency  of  a  falling  column  of  sulphuric  acid  and  then 
cooling  the  compressed  gas  by  refrigeration.  Though 
chlorine  has  long  been  manufactured  in  the  United 
States  for  chemical  purposes,  a  constant  supply  of  it 
was  so  essential  for  the  preparation  of  the  other  gases 
that  Colonel  Walker  insisted  that  it  should  be  produced 
at  Edgewood,  thus  making  the  government  independent 
of  private  manufacturers. 

Chlorpicrin,  while  not  so  poisonous  as  some  of 
the  other  gases,  is,  nevertheless,  an  active  poison  and 
has,  in  addition,  pronounced  lachrymal  (tear-produc- 
ing) and  nauseating  qualities.  Though  chlorpicrin  is 
fatal  when  taken  in  large  quantities,  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  inhale  much  of  it  because  of  its  terribly  nau- 
seating effect.  The  inhalation  of  four  cubic  inches  of  it 
causes  violent  vomiting.  Chlorpicrin  is  produced  by 
the  action  of  picric  acid  upon  chlorine  in  the  form  of 
bleaching-powder.  The  bleaching-powder,  after  be- 
ing diluted  with  water  to  the  consistency  of  thick  cream, 
is  mixed  with  a  solution  of  calcium  picrate  in  large 
stills  holding  5,000  or  more  gallons.  A  jet  of  live  steam 
is  introduced  at  the  bottom  of  the  still  and  the  reaction 
begins  at  once,  the  resulting  chlorpicrin  passing  out 
of  the  still  into  condensers.  This  mixture  of  chlor- 
picrin and  water  is  then  run  into  tanks.  As  chlor- 
picrin does  not  dissolve  in  water,  it  gradually  settles 
to  the  bottom  and  is  drawn  off  and  loaded  directly  into 
the  shell. 

Phosgene,  the  next  member  of  the  poison-gas 
family,  is  the  deadliest  of  the  lung-gases,  killing  al- 
most as  quickly  as  cyanogen.     It  is  produced  by  the 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  117 

combination  of  two  other  gases,  chlorine  and  carbon 
monoxide.  The  reaction  is  efifected  in  iron  boxes, 
lined  with  lead  and  filled  with  charcoal,  into  which  a 
stream  of  chlorine  and  carbon  monoxide,  mixed  in 
proper  proportion,  is  introduced.  The  colorless  gas 
which  results  is  phosgene.  It  is  condensed  to  a  liquid 
by  passing  it  through  a  condenser  surrounded  by  brine 
kept  cold  by  refrigeration  and  is  then  either  stored  in 
strong  steel  containers  or  run  directly  into  the  thirty- 
pound  cylinders  known  as  Livens'  drums.  These 
drums  are  fired  from  a  sort  of  mortar,  called  a  pro- 
jector, and  are  extremely  effective  for  producing  heavy 
concentrations  of  gas  up  to  a  range  of  1,500  yards. 

The  compound  commonly  referred  to  in  chemical 
warfare  as  "mustard-gas"  is  known  to  chemists  as 
dichlorethylsulphide.  Its  nature  is  as  formidable  as 
its  name.  It  has  a  distinctive  smell,  like  garlic  rather 
than  mustard.  It  has  no  immediate  effect  on  the  eyes, 
beyond  a  slight  irritation,  but  after  several  hours  the 
eyes  begin  to  swell  and  inflame  and  practically  blister, 
causing  the  most  intense  pain;  the  nose  discharges 
freely,  and  severe  coughing  and  even  vomiting  ensue. 
Direct  contact  with  the  spray  causes  blistering  of  the 
skin  so  severe  that  it  is  virtually  burned.  Even  when 
protected  by  masks  and  specially  made  clothing,  it  is 
impossible  for  troops  to  remain  for  more  than  eight 
hours  in  an  area  which  has  been  bombarded  with 
mustard-gas.  Dichlorethylsulphide,  to  use  its  correct 
name,  is  produced  by  blowing  cthylene-gas  into  liquid 
sulphur  monochloride  in  large  iron  reaction  vessels. 
Contrar}'  to  the  popular  impression,  this  gas  contains 


ii8      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

no  mustard.  The  details  of  devices  and  methods  for 
introducing  the  ethylene  and  sulphur  monochloride 
into  the  vessels,  the  removal  of  the  product,  the  neces- 
sary agitation  and  cooling  of  the  mass,  and  the  like, 
were  frequently  changed  during  the  development  of 
the  process  and  had  not  reached  a  final  form  even 
when  the  Armistice  was  signed.  Nevertheless,  when 
the  war  ended,  Edgewood  was  producing  30  tons  of 
mustard-gas  a  day  and  a  rapid  increase  up  to  100  tons 
daily  was  practically  assured. 

Though  the  Germans  began  their  use  of  gas  by 
releasing  it  from  cylinders,  depending  upon  the  wind 
to  carry  it  over  the  enemy's  lines,  these  ''cloud  attacks," 
as  they  were  called,  did  not  prove  satisfactory  and  were 
eventually  discontinued,  for  great  difficulty  was  ex- 
perienced in  getting  the  heavy  cylinders  up  to  the  front 
and  installing  them  in  the  trenches,  and  favorable  winds 
could  not  be  depended  upon.  It  seems  likely,  indeed, 
that  the  Germans  failed  to  recognize  the  significance 
of  the  meteorological  records  and  charts  of  northern 
France,  which  show  that  75  per  cent  of  the  prevailing 
winds  are  from  a  southerly  or  southeasterly  direction, 
thus  leaving  the  Germans  only  25  per  cent  of  the  time 
in  which  they  could  use  their  gas  without  danger  of  its 
being  blown  back  over  their  own  lines.  It  was  in 
order  to  overcome  these  meteorological  conditions  that 
the  Germans  evolved  the  idea  of  loading  the  gas  into 
shell,  usually  in  the  form  of  liquid,  which  turned  into 
gas  when  it  came  into  contact  with  the  air  upon  the 
explosion  of  the  shell,  and  firing  these  shell  from  guns 
or  mortars,  thus  enabling  them  to  place  the  gas  wherever 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  119 

they  desired  without  reference  to  the  weather.  During 
the  last  two  years  of  the  war,  barring  a  few  isolated 
instances,  gas  was  used  in  no  other  way. 

The  filling  of  shell  was,  therefore,  one  of  the  most 
important  of  Edgewood's  many  activities.  Let  me 
explain  to  you,  as  simply  and  briefly  as  possible,  how 
the  shell  were  filled  with  phosgene. 

The  empty  shell,  after  inspection,  were  loaded  on 
trucks  together  with  the  required  number  of  loaded 
boosters.  (A  booster,  it  should  be  explained,  is  the  cap 
or  stopper  containing  a  charge  of  high  explosive,  usually 
T  N  T  or  dynamite,  which  is  screwed  on  the  nose  of 
the  shell  after  it  has  been  filled  with  gas,  much  as  a  metal 
top  is  screwed  onto  a  bottle.  Just  before  firing,  a  fuse 
is  inserted  in  the  booster,  igniting  the  explosive,  which 
in  turn  shatters  the  shell,  thus  releasing  the  gas.) 
The  trucks  with  the  empty  shell  were  then  run  by 
electric  locomotives  to  the  filling  buildings.  Here  the 
shell  were  transferred  tp  a  conveyer,  a  sort  of  moving 
platform,  which  slowly  moved  through  a  room  kept 
cold  by  refrigeration.  About  thirty  minutes  was  re- 
quired for  this  operation,  during  which  time  the  shell 
were  cooled  to  a  temperature  of  about  zero.  This 
chilling  of  the  shell  was  made  nccessar>^  because  phos- 
gene has  a  low  boiling-point.  It  was  imperative,  there- 
fore, that  the  temperature  of  the  shell  be  kept  consider- 
ably below  the  boiling-point  of  phosgene  in  order  that 
the  latter  should  remain  in  liquid  form  while  the  filling 
was  taking  place.  The  chilled  shell  were  then  trans- 
ferred to  trucks  and  hauled  by  motor  through  the  filling- 
tunnel  to  the  filling-machines.     Here  the  phosgene,  kept 


I20      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

in  liquid  state  by  refrigeration,  was  run  into  the  shell 
by  automatic  machines.  The  truck  then  carried  the 
filled  shell  forward  a  few  feet,  at  which  point  the 
boosters  were  screwed  into  the  noses  of  the  shell  by 
hand.  The  final  closing  of  the  shell  was  then  effected 
by  motors  operated  by  compressed  air.  The  filled  shell 
were  next  conveyed  to  the  shell-dump,  where  they 
were  classified  and  stored  for  twenty-four  hours,  nose 
down  on  skids,  in  order  to  test  them  for  leaks.  The 
following  day  the  shell  were  again  placed  on  conveyers 
which  carried  them  through  a  painting-machine,  where 
air-brushes  gave  them  a  coat  of  elephant  gray  and 
striped  them  with  the  distinctive  bands  of  color  which 
denoted  the  type  of  gas  they  contained.  The  methods 
followed  in  filling  shell  with  chlorpicrin  were  similar 
to  those  for  phosgene  except  that  refrigeration  was  un- 
necessary. The  peculiar  properties  of  mustard-gas, 
however,  required  an  entirely  different  filling  system. 
Edgewood  Arsenal  also  had  separate  plants  for  filling 
the  stannic-chloride  hand-grenades  used  for  "mopping 
up"  trenches;  for  filling  both  shell  and  grenades  with 
white  phosphorus  for  use  in  forming  smoke-screens  to 
conceal  the  movements  of  advancing  troops,  and  for 
loading  the  incendiary  drop-bombs  used  by  the  Air 
Service. 

The  various  plants  which  I  have  just  described  by 
no  means  comprised  the  whole  of  Edgewood's  activities, 
however,  for,  in  order  to  obtain  a  sufficient  supply  of 
bromine,  certain  compounds  of  which  are  excellent 
tear-producing  materials,  a  series  of  brine-wells  was 
sunk  at  Midland,  Michigan;  a  plant  for  the  production 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  121 

of  another  lachrymator,  brombenzyl  cyanide,  was 
erected  at  Kingsport,  Tennessee;  and  an  establish- 
ment for  the  manufacture  of  diphenychlorarsine — an 
arsenical  material  used  in  gas  warfare  because  it  pro- 
duces violent  sneezing,  thus  causing  the  troops  to  re- 
move their  gas-masks  and  thereby  exposing  them  to 
the  effects  of  the  toxic-gases  used  in  combination  with 
the  arsenicals — was  started  at  Cro}'land,  Pennsyl- 
vania. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  great  mother-plant  on 
Chesapeake  Bay  had  branches  and  ramifications  of 
which  the  public  had  scarcely  an  inkling,  so  carefully 
were  the  details  of  our  gas  production  guarded.  I 
have  already  pointed  out  that  it  was  the  original  in- 
tention to  secure  the  entire  supply  of  toxic  materials 
from  existing  chemical  plants,  and  that  it  was  only 
after  this  plan  was  found  to  be  unfeasible  that  the 
decision  to  build  government  plants  was  reached. 
This  decision  did  not  signify,  however,  that  no  such 
material  would  be  obtained  from  existing  firms.  On 
the  contrary,  it  was  decided  to  utilize  such  firms 
whenever  it  was  possible  to  secure  their  co-operation. 
But  as  the  products  desired  had  never  been  prepared 
on  a  commercial  scale  in  this  country,  it  was  impossible 
to  forecast  with  accuracy  the  cost  of  their  manufacture. 
As  a  result,  the  co-operation  of  the  existing  chemical 
concerns  could  be  secured  only  on  the  condition  that 
the  government  would  finance  the  work.  These  plants, 
therefore,  though  they  continued  to  be  operated  by 
their  owners,  became  in  fact  govermnent  plants,  being 
financed  b>'   the  government,   representatives  of   the 


122      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

War  Department  being  stationed  at  each  establish- 
ment to  supervise  their  administration  and  look  after 
the  government's  interests.  At  first  they  were  under 
the  direction  of  the  trench  warfare  section  of  the 
Ordnance  Department,  but,  under  a  later  order,  they 
were  made  a  part  of  Edgewood  Arsenal  and  placed 
under  the  administration  of  its  commanding  officer. 
The  list  of  these  outside  plants,  with  their  ofiicial 
designation  and  the  product  manufactured  in  each,  is 
as  follows : 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Niagara  Falls  Plant:  Manu- 
facture of  phosgene. 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Midland  (Mich.)  Plant:  Sink- 
ing of  brine-wells  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
adequate  supplies  of  bromine. 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Buffalo  Plant:  Manufacture  of 
mustard-gas. 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Bound  Brook  (N.  J.)  Plant: 
Manufacture  of  phosgene. 

In  addition  to  the  above,  the  following  outside 
plants  were  not  only  built  (or  were  in  process  of  con- 
struction at  the  date  of  the  Armistice)  but  were  operated 
as  weU  by  the  government.  Their  location  at  points 
other  than  Edgewood  was  decided  upon  partly  because 
of  the  fact  that  it  was  thought  wise  to  have  at  least 
two  plants  for  the  manufacture  of  each  important 
material  located  at  different  places,  since  an  accident 
at  one  would  in  no  way  interfere  with  production  at  the 
other.     These  government-owned  establishments  were : 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  123 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Stamford  (Conn.)  Plant:  Manu- 
facture of  chlorpicrin. 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Hastings  (N.  Y.)  Plant:  Manu- 
facture of  mustard-gas. 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Kingsport  (Tenn.)  Plant:  Manu- 
facture of  brombenzyl  cyanide. 

Edgewood  Arsenal,  Croyland  (Pa.)  Plant:  Manu- 
facture of  diphenychlorarsine. 

In  addition  to  these  nine  great  outlying  plants,  with 
their  thousands  of  workmen,  there  was  the  splendidly 
equipped  Research  Department  at  American  Univer- 
sity, on  the  outskirts  of  Washington;  the  Experimental 
Field  and  Proving-Ground  near  Lakehurst,  New  Jersey; 
and  the  Army  Gas  Schools  at  Camp  Kendrick,  New 
Jersey,  and  Camp  A.  A.  Humphreys,  Virginia. 

The  tract  of  land  near  Lakehurst  taken  over  for 
experimental  purposes  was  5  miles  long  and  4  wide  and 
had  an  area  of  nearly  14,000  acres.  As  the  nearest 
habitation  was  2]4  miles  away  no  difficulty  was  ex- 
perienced in  conducting  the  highly  important  experi- 
ments with  the  necessary  secrecy.  The  camp  included 
quarters  for  50  officers  and  barracks  for  800  men,  a 
completely  equipped  chemical  laborator}',  the  staff  of 
which  included  ex-pert  glass-blowers  who  could  make 
every  kind  of  apparatus  required,  a  meteorological 
station,  commanded  b}'  a  former  official  of  the  Govern- 
ment Weather  Bureau,  equipped  with  the  latest  ap- 
paratus necessary  for  making  and  recording  meteoro- 
logical observ^ations,  a  mechanical  shop  containing 
lathes,  drills,  and  tools  for  making  repairs  of  ever}- 


124      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

description,  an  ice-making  plant,  a  post  hospital,  a 
goat  hospital,  a  dog  hospital,  a  dog  kitchen,  and  en- 
closures for  animals  which  had  to  be  kept  under  ob- 
servation for  long  periods.  In  order  to  determine  the 
effects  of  the  various  gases  on  living  subjects  a  large 
stock  of  animals — goats,  dogs,  cats,  rats,  mice,  guinea- 
pigs,  and  monkeys — had  to  be  kept  constantly  on 
hand.  These  animals  were  not  obtainable  in  the 
necessary  numbers  without  considerable  difficulty, 
it  being  necessary,  on  one  occasion,  to  send  an  officer 
to  Mexico  to  purchase  1,500  Angora  goats,  experiments 
having  shown  that  the  goat  possesses  powers  of  resis- 
tance to  gas  which  more  nearly  approximate  those  of 
a  human  being  than  does  any  other  common  animal. 
Representatives  of  these  various  animal  types  were 
placed  in  trenches  modelled  after  those  on  the  Western 
Front  and  bombarded  with  different  forms  of  gas-shell, 
those  which  remained  alive  being  subjected  to  close 
observation,  sometimes  for  many  days,  by  the  experts 
of  the  Pathological  and  Physiological  Department. 
A  human  note  enters  into  this  grim  business  of  pre- 
paring for  war  in  the  fact  that  those  animals,  partic- 
ularly the  dogs,  which  survived  such  an  ex-periment 
were  not  subjected  to  it  again.  I  imagine,  however, 
that  the  officials  of  the  S.  P.  C.  A.  would  have  entered 
a  vigorous  protest  had  they  been  permitted  to  lift  the 
veil  of  secrecy  which  for  many  months  enveloped  the 
operations  of  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service  at  Lake- 
hurst. 

The  new  methods  and  devices  in  gas  warfare  which 
were  developed  by  the  great  corps  of  scientists  and 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  125 

laboratory  experts  attached  to  the  American  University 
Experiment  Station  were  given  practical  trials  at  Lake- 
hurst,  where  they  were  tested  under  conditions  ap- 
proximating as  nearly  as  possible  those  of  actual  war- 
fare. Here  experiments  were  carried  out  to  deter- 
mine the  value  of  gas-shells  bursting  in  the  air  instead 
of  by  impact,  the  value  of  mixing  toxic  or  lachrymatory 
gas  with  shrapnel,  the  value  of  14-inch  naval  shell 
filled  with  a  combination  of  high  explosive  and 
toxic  substance,  and  the  value  of  clouds  of  poison- 
smoke.  Had  the  war  continued,  I  imagine  that  the 
results  of  some  of  these  ex-periments  would  have  given 
the  Germans  the  surprise  of  their  lives. 

Though  the  gas  production  of  Edgewood  Arsenal 
from  August  to  November,  19 18,  increased  from  450  to 
675  tons  a  week,  and  though  the  filling-plant  had  a 
weekly  capacity  of  nearly  1,000  tons,  less  than  100  tons 
of  gas  was  actually  filled  into  shell  weekly.  This 
unfortunate  state  of  affairs  was  due  to  the  failure  of 
the  Ordnance  Department  to  supply  enough,  or  nearly 
enough,  shell  and  boosters  to  keep  pace  with  the  pro- 
duction of  gas.  In  other  words,  there  was  far  more 
gas  than  there  were  shell  to  put  it  in,  and  far  more 
shell  than  there  were  boosters  for  them.  During  the 
early  summer  of  1918,  large  quantities  of  this  suq^lus 
gas  were  shipped  overseas  and  there  loaded  into  shell, 
but  later  instructions  were  received  to  stop  all  ship- 
ments in  bulk  except  a  limited  amount  of  chlorine. 
From  that  time  on,  the  production  of  gas  was  hmited 
by  the  number  of  shell  and  booster  available,  because 
it  is  impossible  to  store  toxic-gases  in  an}-  large  cjuan- 


126      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

titles.  In  fact,  at  all  times  after  the  manufacture  of 
poison-gases  began  in  the  United  States,  the  supply 
of  such  materials  was  not  only  in  excess  of  the  supply 
of  shell  and  booster,  but  the  gas-plants  could  not 
be  operated  to  their  full  capacity  because  there  was 
no  way  of  utilizing  the  maximum  output. 

Do  you  remember  how  often,  during  the  months 
immediately  following  our  entrance  into  the  great 
conflict,  one  heard  the  assertion  made  that  American 
inventive  genius  would  eventually  produce  a  weapon 
so  dreadful,  so  potent,  that  it  would  end  the  war  be- 
cause flesh  and  blood  would  be  unable  to  withstand 
it?  It  was  asserted,  with  a  wealth  of  circumstantial 
detail,  that  Mr.  Edison  had  been  locked  up  for  weeks 
in  his  New  Jersey  laboratory  perfecting  a  device  for 
the  wholesale  slaughter  of  the  Huns  which  would  startle 
the  world.  But,  as  the  war  continued  on  its  bloody 
course,  the  public  faith  in  inventors  gradually  waned 
and  the  American  people  settled  down  to  a  reaUzation 
that  victory  could  be  achieved  only  by  man-power, 
munitions,  and  food.  Yet  the  persons  who  talked  so 
glibly  of  some  startling  discovery  which  would  paralyze 
the  efforts  of  the  enemy  and  abruptly  end  the  war 
little  realized  how  near  to  the  truth  their  imaginations 
led  them-^or  the  government  actually  had  in  its  pos- 
session the  secret  of  a  weapon  so  terrible  that,  had  it  been 
used,  it  would  probably  have  ended  the  war. 

The  story  of  how  the  secret  came  into  the  posses- 
sion of  the  government  is  a  curious  one.  Years  ago 
a  student  of  chemistry,  then  living  in  a  foreign  coun- 
try, while  carrying  on  a  series  of  laboratory  experi- 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  127 

ments,  stumbled  upon  a  chemical  combination  which 
almost  cost  him  his  life.  It  was  a  compound  never 
before  made,  or,  at  least,  never  recorded.  Later  the 
chemist  came  to  the  United  States,  but  it  was  not 
until  he  read  of  the  use  of  toxic-gases  by  the  Germans 
that  he  recalled  his  all  but  fatal  experiment  of  many- 
years  before.  He  kept  silence,  however,  until  Amer- 
ica's entry  into  the  war,  when  he  imparted  his  formula 
to  the  government.  The  chemist's  assertions  of  what 
his  compound  could  accomplish  were  at  first  received 
with  considerable  scepticism,  but  this  scepticism  ab- 
ruptly disappeared  when  the  reports  from  the  Re- 
search Division  of  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service  at 
American  University,  where  the  formula  was  developed, 
were  received.  So  appalling  was  its  nature,  indeed, 
that  the  War  Department  at  first  refused  to  permit 
the  use  of  the  weapon  thus  strangely  placed  in  its  hand 
on  the  ground  that  the  nation  using  it  would  be  guilty 
of  inhumanity.  But  in  July,  1918,  following  the  whole- 
sale use  of  mustard-gas  against  our  troops  by  the  Ger- 
mans, the  scruples  of  those  in  power  disappeared  and 
orders  were  given  that  quantity  production  of  the 
new  toxic  material  should  immediately  be  begun. 

This  super-gas,  as  it  has  been  termed,  was  known 
to  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service  as  G-34,  though  it 
was  more  commonly  referred  to  as  methyl,  a  name 
which  was  given  it  because  it  in  no  way  suggested  the 
true  character  of  this  newest  and  deadliest  of  poisons. 
It  has  also  been  dubbed  ''Lewisite"  because  it  was 
developed  from  the  original  formula  to  a  stage  which 
made  it  practicable  for  military'  use  by  Professor  W. 


128      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Lee  Lewis,  chief  of  the  Defense  Department  of  the 
Research  Division  of  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service. 
Methyl,  or  Lewisite,  is  an  oily,  amber-colored  liquid, 
with  an  odor  which  vaguely  suggests  that  of  the 
geranium.  It  is  somewhat  more  volatile  than  mustard- 
gas,  being  comparable  in  that  respect  to  benzol.  In- 
stead of  being  inoffensive  at  first  contact,  like  mustard, 
it  starts  an  acute  pain  which  quickly  becomes  unen- 
durable. A  single  drop  spilled  on  the  hand  will  pene- 
trate to  the  blood,  attacking  first  the  kidneys,  then 
the  heart  and  lungs.  It  hardens  the  cell-tissues  of 
the  lungs  and  causes  simultaneously  strangulation 
and  a  weakening  of  the  heart  which  result  in  speedy 
and  violent  death.  If  taken  into  the  lungs  by  inhala- 
tion in  any  perceptible  quantity  it  kills  almost  in- 
stantly, the  victim  dying  in  terrible  agony.  //  is  esti- 
mated to  be  seventy-two  times  deadlier  than  mustard- 
gas. 

The  manufacture  of  methyl  was  carried  on  in  an 
abandoned  motor-car  plant  at  Willoughby,  Ohio,  a 
suburb  of  Cleveland,  the  work  being  in  charge  of 
Colonel  F.  M.  Dorsey,  who,  before  the  war,  was  a 
chemical  engineer  in  the  employ  of  the  General  Elec- 
tric Company.  Every  step  in  the  process  of  manu- 
facture was  enveloped  in  the  most  profound  secrecy. 
Every  workman  who  entered  the  stockade  surround- 
ing the  plant  did  so  under  a  voluntary  agreement  not 
to  leave  the  eleven-acre  space  until  the  war  was  won, 
though  this  arrangement  was  later  modified  upon  the 
men  promising  upon  their  honor  not  to  divulge  the 
nature  of  the  product  or  even  the  existence  of  the  plant. 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  129 

All  mail  was  censored  and  even  the  use  of  the  word 
Willoughby  in  correspondence  was  forbidden,  letters 
for  the  officers  and  men  connected  with  the  plant  being 
addressed  to  a  lock-box  in  Cleveland.  There  was  no 
recreation,  the  work  was  hard  and  danger  was  always 
present,  the  men  working  with  their  gas-masks  con- 
stantly at  the  "alert"  position.  Though  none  of  the 
masks  designed  for  protection  against  chlorpicrin, 
phosgene,  or  mustard  were  of  the  slightest  avail  against 
methyl,  the  safety  of  the  workers  was  ensured  by 
specially  designed  masks  and  clothing.  Had  we  used 
methyl  against  the  Germans,  however,  it  is  extremely 
unlikely  that  they  would  have  succeeded  in  devising 
a  means  of  protection  against  it — at  least  in  time  to 
save  themselves. 

The  methyl,  as  manufactured,  was  loaded  into 
both  shell  and  drums.  The  shell,  of  155mm.  calibre, 
contained  about  ten  pounds  of  the  Kquid,  which  be- 
comes a  gas  upon  contact  with  the  air;  the  drums, 
which  held  from  350  to  400  pounds  each,  were  to  be 
dropped  from  airplanes.  It  is  estimated  that  half  a 
hundred  of  these  drums,  judiciously  distributed,  would 
exterminate  the  entire  population  of  Manhattan  Isl- 
and. W^en  the  Armistice  was  signed  methyl  was 
being  produced  at  the  rate  of  approximately  ten  tons 
a  day  and  the  plant  at  Willoughby  was  two  months 
ahead  of  its  schedule,  orders  having  been  gi\'en  that 
3,000  tons  should  be  in  France,  ready  for  use,  by  March 
I,  1919.  It  was  well  for  Germany  that  she  quit  when 
she  did.  Had  methyl  been  turned  loose  against  the 
Huns,  civilization  would  have  had  its  revenge  on  the 


I30      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

assassins  of  the  Liisitania,  on  the  fiends  who  ravaged 
France  and  raped  Belgium. 

Within  forty-eight  hours  after  the  signing  of  the 
Armistice  the  work  of  dismanthng  the  plant  at  Wil- 
loughby  had  begun,  and  ten  weeks  later  its  demoli- 
tion was  complete.  A  special  train,  running  at  night 
under  heav>'  guard,  carried  the  hundreds  of  tons  of 
methyl  which  had  already  been  produced,  in  iron 
containers,  to  Edgewood  Arsenal,  where  it  was  trans- 
ferred to  a  steamer,  taken  out  to  sea,  and  lowered  into 
three  miles  of  salt  water.  But  the  formulae  and  proc- 
esses for  manufacture  still  exist,  locked  away  in  the 
great  vaults  of  the  War  College  in  Washington,  so, 
if  the  nation  is  ever  again  forced  to  take  up  arms,  it 
has  at  hand  the  most  terrible  weapon  ever  devised 
for  the  purpose  of  wholesale  slaughter. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  toxic-gases  had 
been  in  almost  constant  use  by  the  European  beUiger- 
ents  for  two  years  before  the  United  States  entered 
the  conflict,  the  declaration  of  war  found  us  totally 
unprepared  to  commence  the  manufacture  of  the  gas- 
defense  equipment  with  which  every  soldier  going 
overseas  must  be  provided.  Such  an  article  as  a  gas- 
mask had  never  been  produced  in  this  country,  the 
sum  total  of  American  knowledge  on  the  subject  hav- 
ing been  obtained  from  the  masks  brought  back  as 
souvenirs  by  war  correspondents  and  displayed  in 
shop-windows  and  from  the  pictures  in  the  illustrated 
papers.  Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  in  view  of  the  enor- 
mously important  role  which  gas  was  playing  on  the 
European  battle-fields,  only  a  single  American  army 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  131 

officer,  Major  L.  P.  Williamson  of  the  Medical  Corps, 
had  studied  the  subject  of  gas  defense,  and  he  had 
done  so  on  his  own  initiative.  Thus  it  came  about 
that  within  a  few  days  after  the  declaration  of  war, 
the  military  authorities,  confronted  by  the  imperative 
necessity  of  providing  our  expeditionary  forces  with 
gas-defense  equipment,  were  conducting  a  frantic  search 
among  the  various  scientific  departments  of  the  govern- 
ment to  discover  one  possessing  the  necessar}--  facilities 
for  handling  the  problem.  The  Bureau  of  Chemistry 
did  not  have  the  personnel  to  carr>'  on  the  work  and 
the  Department  of  Agriculture  did  not  have  the  neces- 
sar>'  apparatus,  but  the  Bureau  of  Mines  at  Pittsburg 
possessed  some  experience  in  kindred  problems  arising 
from  mine-rescue  work,  and  it  also  had  adequate  facili- 
ties for  handling  the  experimental  work  involved.  It 
was,  therefore,  selected  for  the  purpose.  The  research 
faciHties  at  Pittsburg  soon  proved  inadequate,  how- 
ever, and  in  the  summer  of  191 7  there  was  taken  over 
the  American  University  Experiment  Station,  near 
Washington,  where  virtually  all  of  the  research  work 
connected  with  the  numerous  branches  of  the  Chemical 
Warfare  Service  was  conducted.  The  Research  Divi- 
sion, instead  of  being  dismissed  with  passing  mention, 
is  deserving  of  a  chapter  to  itself,  the  services  which 
it  performed  in  the  development  of  gases,  protective 
equipment,  and  manufacturing  processes  having  been 
of  enormous  assistance  in  the  prosecution  of  the 
war. 

When,  in  May,  191 7,  the  need  arose  for  providing 
masks  for  the  first  contingent  of  the  American  Exi)edi- 


132      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

tionary  Forces,  the  War  Department  appealed  to  the 
Bureau  of  Mines  to  provide  25,000  masks  within 
three  weeks.  Emboldened  by  the  valor  of  ignorance, 
the  officials  of  the  bureau  jauntily  undertook  the  task, 
making  arrangements  for  the  fabric  to  be  produced 
by  a  rubber  company  at  Akron,  Ohio,  and  for  the  masks 
to  be  assembled  at  a  factory  in  Brooklyn.  Instead  of 
producing  25,000  masks  in  three  weeks,  however,  the 
best  they  could  do  was  to  produce  20,000  in  two  months. 
These  were  immediately  shipped  overseas.  But  the 
rubberized  fabric  of  which  they  were  made  was  easily 
penetrated  by  chlorpicrin  vapor,  therefore  affording 
very  little  protection,  and  they  were  returned  unused. 
"The  only  thing  about  them  which  is  satisfactory," 
General  Pershing  is  said  to  have  remarked,  ''is  the 
strap  around  the  neck."  But  the  experience  thus 
gained  opened  the  eyes  of  the  authorities  to  the  gravity 
of  the  problem,  so  that  when,  in  July,  191 7,  the  army 
itself  took  up  the  manufacture  of  gas-masks,  it  was 
with  a  more  complete  realization  of  the  magnitude 
of  the  task  by  which  it  was  confronted.  One  of  the 
first  steps  taken  by  the  War  Department,  upon  as- 
suming charge  of  mask  production,  was  to  give  a 
colonel's  commission  to  Mr.  Bradley  Dewey,  an  officer 
of  the  American  Can  Company,  and  to  place  him  in 
command  of  the  Gas  Defense  Service,  as  it  was  then 
called,  but  which,  upon  the  organization  of  the  Chem- 
ical Warfare  Service,  became  the  Gas  Defense  Divi- 
sion. Thanks  to  the  energy,  resourcefulness,  and  busi- 
ness ability  of  Colonel  Dewey,  backed  by  the  efficiency 
and  enthusiasm  of  the  great  organization  which  he 


MAN  AND  HORSE  COMPLETFLV  PROTKC'TKD   AGAINST  POISONOUS  GAS. 

In  aililition  to  the  mask,  the  man  is  wcarinR  an  anti-mustard  gas  suit,  gloves,  and  boots. 
The  horse  is  provided  with  hoots  and  a  gas  mask. 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  133 

created,  the  American  forces  in  France  were  protected 
against  gas  by  masks  which,  as  proved  by  actual  field 
tests,  gave  twenty  times  the  protection  afforded  by  those 
worn  by  the  Germans. 

It  is  essential  that  a  mask,  or  respirator,  to  use 
its  correct  name,  should  remove  all  traces  of  gas  or 
smoke  from  the  air  before  it  reaches  the  eyes,  nose, 
or  mouth  of  the  wearer.  The  principal  features  of 
the  mask  of  the  "Box  Respirator"  t>pe,  as  used  by 
the  American  forces  throughout  the  war  were: 

(a)  A  canister  of  metal  containing  both  neu- 
tralizing and  absorptive  chemicals  and  a  smoke  filter. 
The  air  to  be  breathed  passes  in  through  an  inlet  check 
valve  and  through  chemicals  and  smoke  filter. 

(6)  A  flexible  rubber-hose  through  which  the 
purified  air  passes  from  the  canister  to  the  face-piece. 

(c)  A  face-piece,  effectively  covering  the  eyes, 
cheeks,  lower  forehead,  nose,  mouth,  and  chin,  pro- 
vided with  eye-pieces  permitting  vision  and  a  harness 
to  hold  the  face-piece  in  place. 

(d)  An  exhalation  valve  which  affords  easy  dis- 
charge of  exhaled  air  and  at  the  same  time  instantly 
closes  upon  inspiration. 

(e)  A  knapsack  slung  from  the  neck  or  shoulder, 
in  which  the  mask  and  canister  are  carried. 

In  the  box  respirator  t>'pe,  the  inhaled  air,  passing 
through  the  canister  and  hose,  went  directly  into  the 
mouth  through  a  rubber  mouth-piece,  which  in  this 
manner  offered  protection  to  the  lungs  in  the  event  of 
the  face-piece  being  damaged  or  not  fitting.  The  mask 
was  also  provided  with  a  spring  and  rubber  clamp 


134      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

which  closed  the  nostrils  and  compelled  the  wearer 
to  breathe  entirely  through  the  mouth. 

While  the  box  respirator  was  in  process  of  manu- 
facture, much  thought  and  eiffort  was  devoted  to  de- 
veloping a  mask  which  would  combine  with  its  safety 
and  good  vision  a  greater  measure  of  comfort,  it  being 
particularly  desired  to  eliminate  the  nose-clip  and 
the  mouth-piece,  which  are  the  box  respirator's  most 
uncomfortable  features.  The  starting-point  in  these 
attempts  was  the  French  Tissot  mask,  several  modi- 
fications of  which  were  put  into  production.  The  best 
mask  of  this  type  was  designed,  curiously  enough,  by 
a  New  York  corset  manufacturer.  Major  Waldemar 
Kops,  whose  name  was  given  to  his  invention,  which 
is  known  as  the  K.T.  or  Kops-Tissot  mask.  One  hun- 
dred and  eighty-nine  thousand  of  the  K.T.  masks, 
which  were  radically  different  and  far  more  comfort- 
able than  the  box  respirator  type,  had  been  manu- 
factured when  the  Armistice  was  signed.  The  total 
number  of  masks  produced  by  the  Gas  Defense  Divi- 
sion was  more  than  three  and  a  half  million. 

The  mask-makers  were  confronted  at  an  early 
period  with  the  problem  of  finding  a  charcoal  of  suf- 
ficient density  to  absorb  the  toxic  fumes,  the  wood- 
charcoal  which  was  used  in  most  of  the  French  and 
British  masks  being  very  far  from  satisfactory.  After 
considerable  experimentation  it  was  discovered  that 
a  charcoal  having  sufficient  absorptivity  could  be 
produced  from  the  shell  of  the  cocoanut,  whereupon 
officers  were  despatched  to  the  Hawaiian  Islands  and 
the  British  West  Indies  to  arrange  for  large  shipments 


X     --J 

H  - 


w    ^ 


TESTING  RESPIRATORS  OUTSIDE  THE  GAS  CHAMBER. 


TESTING  GAS  MASKS  INSIDE    1  HE  GAS  CHAMBER. 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  135 

of  cocoanut-shells  to  the  United  States.  The  supply 
thus  obtained  proved  entirely  inadequate,  however, 
whereupon  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service  issued  an 
appeal  to  the  American  public  to  save  the  shells  of 
Brazil  nuts,  hickory- nuts,  and  walnuts,  the  pits  of 
peaches,  prunes,  apricots,  and  cherries,  and  the  seeds 
of  dates,  the  collection  of  the  pits  and  shells  being  under- 
taken by  the  Red  Cross,  the  Boy  Scouts,  and  kindred 
organizations.  Placards  and  receptacles  were  put  in 
public  places  throughout  the  country  and  almost  im- 
mediately fruit-pits  began  to  pour  in  by  the  ton,  every 
family  making  it  a  point  of  honor  to  save  its  pits  "for 
the  boys  fighting  overseas,"  as  they  proudly  put  it. 
There  were  numberless  cases  of  old  ladies  who  sent 
in  by  mail  a  few  peach-pits  which  they  had  conscien- 
tiously saved  and  which  they  had  cleaned  as  carefully  as 
though  they  were  jewels.  As  it  required  7  pounds  of 
pits  and  shells  to  make  the  charcoal  for  a  single  mask, 
3,500  tons  were  used  in  the  million  masks  which  we  sent 
overseas. 

Because  it  was  realized  that  the  slightest  flaw 
or  imperfection  in  a  finished  mask  might  well  mean 
the  death  in  agony  of  an  American  soldier,  an  ex- 
tremely rigid  system  of  inspection  was  devised.  It  was 
discovered,  for  example,  that  all  thread  holes  must  be 
filled  with  gelatine,  in  order  to  prevent  the  gas  from 
being  carried  through  by  the  thread;  that  wrinkles  in 
the  band  around  the  face  and  head  permitted  gas  to 
leak  inside  the  face-piece;  that  the  mouth-piece  must 
be  reinforced  with  bushings  so  that  the  soldier  would 
not  bite  it  in  the  excitement  of  a  gas  attack  and  there- 


136      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

by  cut  ofT  his  own  breath.  Only  the  most  painstaking 
and  conscientious  women — usually  those  having  hus- 
bands or  sons  at  the  front — were  chosen  for  the  work 
of  final  inspection,  and,  even  after  they  had  examined 
each  mask  in  every  detail  it  was  again  inspected  over 
a  bright  light  in  a  dark  booth  for  small  pinholes  which 
might  have  escaped  the  ordinary  visual  inspection. 
And,  in  order  to  make  the  inspectors  doubly  careful, 
they  were  frequently  required  to  go  into  the  gas-cham- 
bers wearing  masks  chosen  at  random  from  those  they 
themselves  had  passed.  To  obtain  absolute  results 
as  to  the  protection  afforded  by  a  mask,  however, 
breathing  tests  in  a  gas-chamber  had  to  be  employed. 
This  testing  was  done  by  enlisted  men  of  the  Gas  De- 
fense Division,  who  spent  many  hours  each  day  test- 
ing masks  and  canisters  in  the  gas-chambers,  some- 
times working  in  a  concentration  of  phosgene  as  high 
as  I  per  cent.  Without  hope  of  glory  or  promotion, 
without  the  lure  of  decorations,  these  men  day  after 
day,  month  after  month,  risked  their  lives  in  order 
that  their  fellows  at  the  front  might  have  a  better 
chance  to  live.  Though  they  wore  silver  instead  of 
gold  chevrons,  they  are  as  deserving  of  thanks  and 
admiration  as  the  men  who  broke  the  Hindenburg 
line  or  battled  in  the  Forest  of  the  Argonne. 

Though  the  earlier  gas-masks  were  manufactured 
in  Brooklyn,  and  later  in  Philadelphia,  the  operations 
of  the  division  expanded  so  rapidly  that  by  November, 
191 7,  it  became  evident  that  it  was  no  longer  prac- 
ticable for  a  commercial  organization  to  carr>'  on  the 
manufacture  of  this  new  and  vitally  important  article 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  137 

of  equipment  in  the  quantities  demanded  by  the  new 
army  programme,  and  it  was  consequently  deemed 
advisable  to  establish  a  government-owned  and  con- 
trolled organization.  In  pursuance  of  this  policy,  the 
work  of  mask  manufacture  was  transferred  in  Novem- 
ber to  Long  Island  City,  the  plant  expanding  in  seven 
months  from  a  floor  space  of  157,000  square  feet  to 
1,000,000  square  feet,  or  23  acres.  When  the  Armistice 
was  signed  the  Gas  Defense  Division  had  a  personnel 
of  274  officers,  2,353  enlisted  men,  and  13,000  civilians. 
Much  of  the  work  was  done  by  women,  and,  as  a  traitor 
could  have  worked  irreparable  damage  by  tampering 
with  the  masks,  the  employees  were  selected  only  after 
the  closest  investigation  by  the  Military  Intelligence 
Division  of  their  antecedents  and  affiliations.  From 
the  very  outset  the  officers  in  charge  of  mask  produc- 
tion conducted  a  campaign  for  efiiciency  based  on 
patriotism.  The  walls  of  the  factory  were  hung  with 
copies  of  a  poster  depicting  a  soldier  dying  from  gas 
as  the  result  of  a  defective  mask;  it  bore  the  grim  and 
suggestive  title  "The  Last  Inspection."  Lectures  and 
motion-pictures  were  used  to  emphasize  the  horrors 
of  death  by  gas.  And  everywhere  were  placards  bear- 
ing the  admonition:  "Remember  that  your  careless- 
ness may  cost  the  life  of  your  husband,  your  son,  your 
brother." 

It  is  not  generally  appreciated,  I  think,  that  gas 
warfare  has  tactics  all  its  own.  For  example:  In 
preparing  for  an  infantry  attack  the  Germans  were 
accustomed  to  first  concentrate  all  their  guns  on  our 


138      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

batteries.  After  a  brief  but  intensive  bombardment 
of  our  artillery'  positions  a  portion  of  the  German  bat- 
teries would  abruptly  switch  their  fire  onto  our  in- 
fantry, using,  of  course,  a  large  proportion  of  gas- 
shell.  Meanwhile  the  German  infantry  officers  had 
been  notified  as  to  the  kinds  of  gas  their  batteries  were 
using,  and  where.  Hence,  when  the  German  storming 
troops  swept  forward  they  did  not  wear  masks,  for 
their  officers  knew  that  a  non-persistent  gas  had  been 
used  against  the  point  which  was  to  be  attacked.  Our 
troops,  being  ignorant  of  this,  however,  had  donned 
their  masks  when  the  first  gas-shell  came  over,  and 
were,  therefore,  both  fatigued  and  hampered  when  they 
were  called  upon  to  resist  the  assault. 

And  here  is  another  example  of  gas  tactics :  Word 
having  reached  the  French  that  the  Germans  were 
planning  to  attack  a  certain  sector  near  Rheims,  the 
troops  holding  this  portion  of  the  line  were  quietly 
withdrawn  from  the  front  trenches  the  night  before  the 
attack  was  to  take  place,  a  few  autoriflemen  being 
left  to  simulate  a  defense.  Before  the  troops  departed, 
however,  they  placed  mustard-gas  shells,  which  had 
been  fitted  by  the  artillery  with  electrically  controlled 
fuses,  in  the  dugouts.  The  French  gunners  had, 
meanwhile,  ascertained  to  a  foot  the  range  of  the 
trenches  which  were  being  evacuated.  At  daybreak 
came  the  expected  German  attack.  As  the  helmeted 
figures  came  swarming  across  No  Man's  Land  in  the 
dim  light  of  early  dawn  the  few  remaining  French- 
men set  off  green  rockets  as  a  signal  to  the  artillery  and 
took  to  their  heels.     No  sooner  had  the  Germans  oc- 


v"C:-''**''^re=<5 


TRAINING  FOR  GAS  WARFARE. 
Troops  wearing  gas  masks  charging  in  open  order  in  practice  at  Long  Island  City. 


CUTTING  THEIR  WAY  THROUGH  BARBED  WIRE  ENTANGLEMENTS  WHILE 
TRAINING  WITH  (;AS  MASKS. 


THE   GAS-MAKERS  139 

cupied  the  evacuated  trenches,  therefore,  than  the 
French  batteries  turned  loose  on  them  a  hurricane  of 
steel,  putting  down  a  barrage  which  completely  cut 
them  off  from  their  own  lines.  The  Germans  naturally 
sought  shelter  from  this  shell-storm  in  the  deserted 
dugouts.  At  about  the  same  moment  a  French  artil- 
lery officer  pressed  his  finger  upon  a  button,  an  electric 
current  leaped  along  a  buried  wire,  the  shells  in  the 
dugouts  were  blown  asunder,  liberating  the  poison- 
gas — and  the  Germans  perished  almost  to  a  man. 

As  the  result  of  the  experiments  at  American  Uni- 
versity, Lakehurst,  and  Edgewood,  and  the  experiences 
of  our  troops  in  the  field,  several  new  gases  of  incredible 
deadliness  were  invented  as  well  as  numerous  new 
methods  of  using  them,  many  of  which  would  certainly 
have  been  utilized  had  the  war  continued.  But  the 
League  of  Nations  being  still  confined  to  paper,  and 
universal  disarmament  being  still  in  the  distant  future, 
it  is  as  well,  I  feel,  not  to  particularize  about  them.  It 
is  enough  to  say  that,  thanks  to  the  work  of  the  Chemi- 
cal Warfare  Service,  there  are  stored  away  in  the  vaults 
of  the  War  Department  certain  plans  and  formulas 
which,  in  the  event  of  another  war — which  God  forbid ! 
— would  give  us  a  weapon  of  undreamed-of  potency 
and  terror.  Speaking  from  first-hand  knowledge,  I 
can  assure  any  potential  enemies  of  the  United  States 
that  the  chemical  warfare  which  we  are  prepared  to 
wage  should  the  necessity  ever  arise  again  would  make 
our  recent  gas  activities,  vast  as  they  were,  seem  like 
a  joke. 


IV 
THE  "Q.  M.  C." 

SOME  years  ago  there  was  exhibited  at  the  Grand 
Salon  in  Paris  an  immense  mural  painting,  in- 
tended, if  I  remember  rightly,  for  one  of  the  walls  of 
the  Pantheon.  I  think  it  was  by  Detaille,  but  of  that 
I  am  not  certain  nor  does  it  matter.  The  canvas, 
which  reached  from  floor  to  ceiling,  was  of  such  vast 
dimensions  that  the  gallery,  huge  as  it  is,  did  not  per- 
mit of  a  satisfactory  perspective;  it  was  characterized, 
moreover,  by  such  a  wealth  of  detail  that  one  might 
look  at  it  from  dawn  to  dusk  and  yet  not  grasp  it  all. 
So  in  attempting  to  depict,  even  in  the  sketchiest 
fashion,  the  operations  and  activities  of  the  Quarter- 
master Corps,  I  find  myself  embarrassed  by  the  same 
limitations.  The  composition  is  too  vast  for  proper 
perspective,  too  rich  in  variety  and  detail  to  be  grasped 
by  the  imagination.  The  best  that  I  can  hope  to  do, 
therefore,  in  the  limited  space  at  my  disposal,  is  to 
hurry  you  along,  like  the  guides  who  used  to  conduct 
visitors  through  the  galleries  of  the  Vatican  in  an  hour, 
pointing  out  a  picturesque  feature  here  and  calling  your 
attention  to  something  of  interest  there — touching  only 
on  the  high  spots,  as  it  were. 

To  begin  with,  let  me  give  you  some  conception 
of  the  subject's  magnitude  and  importance.  The  total 
cost  of  the  war  to  the  United  States,  plus  the  estimate 
of  the  amount  which  would  be  required  to  carry  it  on 

to  July  I,  1919,  was  approximately  $16,500,000,000, 

140 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  141 

while  the  total  expenditures  and  estimates  of  the 
Quartermaster  Corps  for  the  same  period  were  some- 
thing over  $8,500,000,000.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  expenditures  and  requirements  of  the  Quartermaster 
Carps  comprised  more  than  half  of  the  total  expenditures 
and  requirements  of  the  entire  army.  The  purchases 
which  it  made  were  remarkable  not  only  for  their  un- 
precedented volume  but  for  their  amazing  variety.  It 
supplied  the  armies  of  the  United  States  with  practi- 
cally everything  they  required,  save  only  ordnance,  its 
purchases  running  all  the  way  from  coal  to  needles, 
from  lemon-drops  to  rolling  kitchens,  from  sheet-music 
to  beef  and  mutton  on  the  hoof.  At  one  time  it  con- 
stituted the  entire  wool  trade  of  the  United  States,  if 
not,  indeed,  of  the  whole  Western  Hemisphere,  for  it 
optioned  every  pound  of  wool  in  sight  and  sent  its 
agents  out  with  orders  to  buy  up  the  excess  wool  of  the 
earth.  It  purchased  enough  cotton  goods  to  make  a 
sheet  which  would  cover  the  District  of  Columbia  four 
times  over.  It  controlled  the  leather  trade  of  the 
nation.  It  operated  the  largest  shirt-factory  in  exist- 
ence. It  developed  the  most  highly  specialized  shoe 
ever  made,  purchased  33,000,000  pairs  of  them,  car- 
ried them  in  120  sizes,  and  opened  schools  to  teach  its 
officers  the  science  of  shoe-fitting.  By  enlisting  the 
co-operation  of  a  score  of  universities  it  established  a 
great  correspondence  school  for  the  education  of  quar- 
termaster officers.  It  had  other  schools,  a  whole  sys- 
tem of  them,  where  training  was  given  in  cooking,  bak- 
ing, butchery,  and  coffee-roasting.  It  purchased  every 
stock  of  rubber  boots  and  rain-coats  in  the  United 


142      THE   ARAIY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

States.  It  established  and  operated  farms  and  truck- 
gardens  at  the  various  camps  and  cantonments.  By 
organizing  a  Salvage  Service  for  the  reclamation  of 
articles  which  would  otherwise  have  been  thrown  away 
it  saved  151,000,000  of  the  taxpayers'  dollars.  The 
army  needed  horses  and  mules — thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  them — whereupon  the  Quartermaster  Corps 
gave  commissions  to  half  a  hundred  of  America's  best- 
known  sportsmen  and  gentlemen  riders  and  sent  them 
to  the  West,  to  Spain,  to  the  Argentine,  to  purchase 
animals.  General  Pershing  cabled  that  he  wanted 
sheet-music  for  the  390  bands  of  the  A.  E.  F.,  where- 
upon the  Quartermaster  Corps,  not  being  itself  musi- 
cally inclined,  looked  about  for  a  man  who  was.  It 
was  discovered  that  the  most  successful  composer  of 
popular  music  in  America  had  enlisted  in  the  Coast 
Guard,  but  the  Quartermaster  Corps  borrowed  him, 
told  him  to  select  the  sort  of  music  that  he  thought  the 
boys  in  France  would  like,  and  send  it  to  Pershing. 
He  did.  It  cheered  up  the  army  overseas  and  cost  the 
government  $50,000.  It  was  cheap  at  the  price.  The 
Quartermaster  Corps  educated  manufacturers  in  the 
production  of  articles  strange  to  their  experience,  and 
in  some  cases  it  developed  entirely  new  industries.  It 
was  a  shipmaster,  a  wool-grower,  a  coal-operator,  a 
clothier,  a  builder  of  vehicles,  a  school-teacher,  a  re- 
former of  labor  conditions,  an  inventor  of  new  products, 
and  an  originator  of  new  methods.  To  the  miners  of 
Pennsylvania,  quarrying  coal  in  the  low-roofed  gal- 
leries by  the  light  of  their  flickering  lamps,  to  the  fruit- 
pickers  in  the  sun-drenched  orchards  of  Hood  River 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  143 

and  the  Santa  Clara,  to  the  pallid  clothing-workers, 
bending  over  their  machines  in  the  stifling  sweat-shops 
of  the  New  York  Ghetto,  to  the  great  manufacturers 
of  New  England,  and  to  the  beef  barons  of  the  Middle 
West,  '^  Quartermaster  Corps,  United  States  Amry," 
was  a  phrase  to  conjure  with. 

In  those  casual,  comfortable,  easy-going  days  be- 
fore the  Great  War  startled  us  out  of  our  national  com- 
placency, when  the  work  of  the  army  consisted  in  gar- 
risoning many  small  and  widely  scattered  posts  and  in 
doing  poUce  duty  on  the  Canal  Zone  or  in  "  the  Islands," 
the  Quartermaster  Corps,  the  ''Q.  M.,"  as  it  was  fa- 
miliarly called,  occupied  much  the  same  relation  to 
our  little  military  establishment  that  a  "general  store" 
does  to  a  \dllage.  By  this  I  mean  that  it  supplied 
most  of  the  army's  wants.  It  was  charged,  to  put  it 
briefly,  with  clothing,  feeding,  housing,  and  paying  the 
army,  supplying  it  with  horses,  harness,  vehicles,  and, 
in  short,  virtually  everything  else  save  only  the  actual 
tools  of  war.  It  also  manned  and  operated  the  steam- 
ers of  the  Army  Transport  Service,  was  charged  with 
the  movement  of  troops  on  land,  and  had  jurisdiction 
to  a  large  extent  over  motor  transportation,  especially 
the  movement  of  supplies.  Though  its  business  meth- 
ods were  as  antiquated  as  the  quill  pen  and  the  copy- 
ing-press, like  the  mules  which  drew  its  wagons  it 
jogged  unconcernedly  along.  If  the  colonel's  wife 
needed  some  shelves  in  her  kitchen  she  sent  for  the 
quartermaster  and  they  were  put  up  with  neatness 
and  despatch.     When   the  junior  ofiicers  at  a  post 


144      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE   ARMY 

wanted  to  attend  a  dance  in  town  the  quartermaster 
could  always  be  depended  upon  to  provide  a  convey- 
ance. The  quartermaster  ran  the  post  exchanges  and 
canteens.  If  there  was  a  delay  in  the  delivery  of  the 
winter's  coal,  if  the  bread  was  poorly  baked,  if  the  milk 
was  sour,  if  the  men's  shoes  did  not  fit,  if  there  was  a 
leak  in  a  barracks  roof,  if  a  horse  developed  a  spavin, 
if  the  pay-checks  were  not  received  on  time,  it  was  the 
quartermaster  who  had  to  take  the  blame.  He  was 
all  things  to  all  men,  and  if  he  did  not  do  all  things  as 
well  as  they  might  have  been  done,  it  was  not  his  fault 
so  much  as  the  fault  of  the  antiquated  and  cumber- 
some system  in  which  he  had  been  trained. 

But  upon  the  outbreak  of  war  this  state  of  affairs 
underwent  a  sudden  change.  It  was  no  more  possible 
for  the  Quartermaster  Corps,  as  it  was  then  organized, 
to  feed  and  clothe  and  transport  overseas  an  army  of 
5,000,000  men  than  it  would  be  for  a  village  merchant 
to  meet  the  demands  which  would  be  made  upon  him 
if  oil  were  discovered  in  the  vicinity  and  the  village 
expanded  into  a  city  overnight.  At  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  the  Office  of  the  Quartermaster-General  con- 
sisted of  five  divisions — Administrative,  Finance,  Sup- 
plies, Construction,  and  Transportation — but  when  our 
stupendous  military  programme  began  to  assume  defi- 
nite form  it  became  increasingly  apparent  that  no  sin- 
gle department  could  successfully  direct  so  many  and 
varied  activities,  and  that  the  Quartermaster  Corps 
must  confine  itself  to  the  huge  task  of  purchase  and 
supply.  The  first  step  toward  its  reorganization  along 
these  lines  was  the  divorce  of  the  Construction  Divi- 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  145 

sion,  which  was  made  a  separate  branch  of  the  War 
Department  under  Colonel  (later  Brigadier-General) 
I.  W.  Littell,  who  reported  directly  to  the  secretary 
of  war.  Though  the  officers  of  this  division,  to  which 
was  assigned  the  tremendous  task  of  constructing 
the  camps  and  cantonments  for  our  new  armies,  con- 
tinued to  wear  the  insignia  of  the  Quartermaster  Corps, 
and  though  they  were  known  as  construction  quarter- 
masters, they  had  no  connection  with  the  Office  of 
the  Quartemriaster-General.  During  the  first  year 
of  the  war  the  Transportation  Division  operated  a 
considerable  fleet  of  vessels  engaged  in  the  transport 
of  troops,  animals,  and  supplies,  but  in  April,  191 8, 
this  division  was  abolished,  the  entire  transportation 
service  being  taken  from  the  Quartermaster  Corps 
and  placed  \vith  the  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic 
Division  of  the  General  Staff.  The  next  branch  to  be 
lopped  off  was  the  Finance  Division,  the  functions  of 
which  were  transferred  to  the  newly  organized  Office 
of  the  Director  of  Finance,  who  assumed  charge  of 
all  financial  matters  for  the  army.  In  response  to 
the  constantly  increasing  demands  for  motor  trans- 
port, a  Motor  Transport  Service  was  added  to  the 
Quartermaster  Corps  in  April,  191 8,  but  was  taken 
away  from  it  three  months  later  and  established  as 
a  separate  branch  of  the  army  under  the  title  of  the 
Motor  Transport  Corps.  This  is,  however,  strictly 
an  operating  unit  and  should  not  be  confused  with 
the  Motor  and  Vehicles  Division  of  the  Quartermaster 
Corps.  By  this  time  the  "Q.  M."  had  been  so  com- 
pletely transformed  as  to  be  almost  unrecognizable 


146      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

to  men  who  had  grown  old  in  the  service.  Little  re- 
mained of  the  old  organization,  indeed,  save  the  name, 
and  even  that  all  but  disappeared  when,  in  October, 
1918,  the  Office  of  the  Quartermaster-General  was 
merged  in  the  newly  organized  Office  of  the  Director 
of  Purchase  and  Storage.  By  the  concluding  month 
of  the  war,  therefore,  the  old  Quartermaster  Corps 
had  lost  all  control  over  construction,  finance,  and 
transportation,  so  that  of  its  original  five  divisions 
only  the  Administrative  and  Supplies  remained.  The 
latter  had  been  expanded,  however,  into  nine  pur- 
chasing divisions  and  there  had  also  been  added  to 
the  organization — now  commonly  referred  to  as  ''Pur- 
chase and  Storage" — five  storage  di\dsions  and  a  Salv- 
age Division.  At  the  same  time  that  the  Office  of  the 
Director  of  Purchase  and  Storage  assumed  the  fimc- 
tions  of  the  Quartermaster  Corps  it  also  took  over 
the  procurement  activities  of  the  Medical  Corps  and 
of  the  Corps  of  Engineers,  as  well  as  procuring  certain 
standardized  articles  for  the  Signal  Corps  and  the 
Ordnance  Department,  thus  bringing  under  a  single 
head  all  the  purchase,  storage,  and  distribution  agencies 
of  the  army.  In  order  to  make  this  extremely  involved 
relationship  a  little  clearer,  I  ought  to  explain,  perhaps, 
that  the  Office  of  the  Director  of  Purchase  and  Storage 
is  one  of  the  three  chief  operating  branches  of  the  Pur- 
chase, Storage,  and  Traffic  Division  of  the  General 
Staff,  the  others  being  the  Office  of  the  Director  of 
Traffic  and  the  Office  of  the  Director  of  Finance. 

In  the  old  days  the  procurement  activities  of  the 
army  were  decentralized  to  such  an  extent  that  every 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  147 

depot,  camp,  and  post,  wherever  situated,  had  charge 
of  procuring  practically  everything  it  used  except  uni- 
forms, the  procurement  being  under  the  direction  of 
the  camp  or  post  quartermaster,  as  the  case  might  be. 
The  new  organization  has  produced  a  system,  however, 
whereby  everything  required  by  the  army  is  purchased 
either  by  the  officers  in  charge  of  the  thirteen  General 
Supply  Zones  into  which  the  United  States  has  been 
divided,  or  direct  from  Washington.  It  is  scarcely  nec- 
essary to  comment  on  the  enormous  saving  in  time, 
money,  and  labor  thus  effected.  We  will  now  say 
"Amen"  to  this  Httle  sermon  on  organization,  which  is 
a  dry  subject  at  best,  and  turn  to  more  interesting 
topics. 

Of  the  countless  problems  which  confronted  the 
Quartermaster  Corps  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  by 
far  the  most  important  was  that  of  feeding  the  army, 
for  an  army,  as  Napoleon  inelegantly  but  truthfully 
put  it,  travels  upon  its  belly.  The  American  soldier, 
like  the  American  small  boy,  is  a  prodigious  eater  and 
he  is  always  hungry.  He  is,  moreover,  extremely  finical 
about  the  quahty  and  variety  of  his  food.  He  has 
been  accustomed  from  boyhood  to  have  unrestricted 
access  to  the  cooky  jar  and  the  cake-box,  and  things 
were  wrong,  indeed,  when  there  were  not  at  least  three 
kinds  of  mother's  pies  on  the  top  shelf  in  the  pantry. 
He  laughed  at  danger  and  jeered  at  hardships,  but  in 
return  he  expected  a  grateful  Uncle  Sam,  as  repre- 
sented by  the  Quartermaster  Corps,  to  show  the  same 
consideration  for  him  when  it  came  to  a  question  of 


148      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

food  that  his  mother  had  always  done.  And  Uncle 
Sam  measured  up  to  his  expectations.  Not  only  was 
the  American  soldier  given  all  the  food  that  he  required 
— at  the  time  of  the  Armistice  approximately  10,000,000 
pounds  of  food  were  being  sent  every  day  to  the  troops 
in  France — but  he  had  the  best  food  in  Europe.  In 
those  lean  days  of  19 18,  when  it  was  impossible  to 
obtain  a  spoonful  of  sugar  in  the  smartest  restaurants 
in  Paris,  and  when  the  manufacture  of  pastries  of  every 
description  had  been  prohibited  by  law,  the  Yankee 
doughboys  always  had  full  sugar-bowls  and  unUmited 
quantities  of  pies,  cake,  and  puddings.  Indeed,  it  is 
not  the  slightest  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  American 
enlisted  man  had  a  considerably  better  mess  than  most 
French  generals.  I  know,  for  I  have  eaten  with  both. 
Never  before  has  an  army  been  called  upon  to 
send  subsistence  so  great  a  distance  to  so  many  men. 
It  was  obviously  impossible  to  ask  France  and  Eng- 
land to  provide  for  our  rapidly  increasing  armies  from 
their  own  scanty  stores,  for  those  countries  were  already 
rationing  their  civilian  populations.  The  food  had, 
therefore,  to  be  obtained  in  the  United  States,  some  of 
it  being  transported  6,000  miles  before  reaching  the 
mess-tables  of  the  A.  E.  F.  Moreover,  in  order  to 
provide  against  the  possibility  of  the  food-ships  being 
torpedoed  or  the  capture  of  the  base  depots,  it  was 
necessary  to  send  two  pounds  of  food  where  one  would 
ordinarily  have  answered.  To  make  things  worse,  as 
the  demands  for  food  increased,  the  available  tonnage 
decreased.  The  utmost  economy  in  space  became  so 
imperative,  indeed,  that  inspectors  from  the  Packing 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  149 

Service  Branch  were  stationed  at  the  various  depots 
with  instructions  to  pay  particular  attention  to  the 
thickness  of  lumber  used  in  the  packing-cases  and  to 
insist  on  the  utilization  of  every  cubic  foot  of  spare 
space,  as,  for  example,  the  boilers  in  rolling  kitchens, 
which  were  filled  with  various  articles  of  subsistence 
supplies.  Even  the  marmites — the  camp  cooking- 
pots — were  filled  with  beans,  peas,  and  other  dry 
stores.  When,  in  the  spring  of  1918,  the  Germans 
launched  that  tremendous  offensive  which  has  been  so 
fittingly  called  ''the  charge  of  a  nation,"  and  every 
available  ton  of  shipping  was  required  for  the  transport 
of  the  troops  which  we  were  rushing  overseas  to  stem 
the  Teutonic  onslaught,  all  canned  fruits  and  vege- 
tables— pears,  apples,  pineapple,  peas,  corn,  asparagus, 
sweet  potatoes — were  stricken  from  the  lists,  such 
space  as  was  available  being  filled  with  boneless  beef, 
dried  fruits,  dehydrated  vegetables — and  tomatoes  !  I 
do  not  mean  to  imply  that  such  mainstays  as  the  "four 
B's" — bread,  bacon,  beef,  and  beans — were  sacrificed 
for  the  juicy  fruit  of  the  tomato-vine,  for  they  were 
not,  but  tomatoes  were  regarded  as  such  an  important 
item  of  the  soldier's  menu  that,  notwithstanding  the 
poverty  of  space,  their  shipments,  instead  of  being 
diminished,  were  increased.  In  addition  to  the  cus- 
tomary ways  of  serving  them,  thousands  of  cans  were 
taken  up  to  the  line  to  relieve  the  soldier's  thirst,  a 
quart  of  tomato  juice  being  more  effective  than  a  gallon 
of  water.  Lest  you  should  get  the  impression,  from 
what  I  have  just  said,  that  there  was  a  shortage  of 
beans,  I  might  mention,  in  passing,  that  75,000,000 


I50      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

cans  of  baked  beans  with  tomato  sauce  were  put  in 
the  hands  of  the  army  cooks,  and  in  order  to  provide 
against  any  possible  lack  of  this  stand-by,  there  was 
purchased  to  supplement  them  77,000,000  pounds  of 
dried  beans.  I  have  never  heard  an  American  soldier 
complain  that  he  did  not  have  enough  beans.  Fore- 
seeing the  enormous  demand  which  there  would  be 
for  prunes  and  dried  apricots  and  apples,  the  quarter- 
master-general summoned  from  his  ranch  in  the  Santa 
Clara  Valley  of  California,  where  he  was  living  in 
pleasant  retirement,  the  foremost  authority  on  dried 
fruits  in  America,  informed  him  of  the  army's  needs, 
and  gave  him  carte  blanche  to  fill  them.  He  sent  over- 
seas enough  prunes  to  have  supplied  all  the  boarding- 
houses  in  America  for  years  to  come.  Coffee  was  an- 
other important  item.  The  British  Army  consumed 
enormous  quantities  of  tea,  the  Italians  depended 
largely  upon  their  cheap  native  wines,  and  the  French 
drank  an  alleged  coffee  which  was  really  camouflaged 
chicory,  but  the  American  troops  were  given  real  coffee 
— the  best  that  money  could  buy.  Nothing  better 
illustrates  the  quality  of  the  food  served  to  our  men 
than  the  following  telegram,  sent  by  the  quarter- 
master-general of  the  A.  E.  F.  to  Washington. 

"Ship  2,000,000  reserve  rations  packed  in  her- 
metically sealed  galvanized  iron  cases,  25  to  the  case, 
meat  to  be  substituted  in  lieu  of  bacon  and  choice 
George  Washington  coffee  or  other  similar  substitute 
in  Heu  of  ground  coffee." 

As  even  the  best  grades  of  coffee  can  be  ruined  if 
improperly  prepared,  there  were  established  at  Camp 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  151 

Meade  and  Camp  Johnston  schools  for  cofTee-roasting. 
Here  enlisted  men  were  given  a  course  of  instruction 
in  coffee  roasting,  blending,  grinding,  and  packing,  and 
upon  graduation  were  sent  to  the  various  camps  where 
coffee-roasting  plants  had  been  installed.  Thus  the 
soldier  received  a  fresher  and  a  better  cup  of  coffee 
than  ever  before,  and  the  government  made  a  saving 
of  from  two  to  three  cents  a  pound,  for  as  the  green 
coffee  was  shipped  to  the  camps  by  the  various  Zone 
Supply  officers  and  was  roasted  every  day,  there  was 
practically  no  overhead  expense  incurred. 

Beef  is,  of  course,  the  chief  muscle  and  fat-produc- 
ing food,  the  army  allowing  456  pounds  of  beef  per 
year  for  each  soldier.  This  does  not  mean,  however, 
that  the  soldier  actually  eats  that  amount  of  beef 
annually,  for,  just  as  the  currency  of  the  country  is 
based  on  the  gold  standard,  the  meat  ration  of  the 
army  is  based  on  the  beef  standard.  It  is  customar>', 
therefore,  to  substitute  pork,  usually  in  the  form  of 
bacon,  for  30  per  cent  of  the  beef  ration,  twelve  ounces 
of  bacon  being  equivalent  to  twenty  ounces  of  beef. 
The  balance  of  the  meat  ration  consists  for  the  most 
part  of  fresh  beef,  when  it  is  procurable,  supplemented 
by  canned  beef,  corned  beef,  and  canned  hash.  The 
meat-cutting  for  the  army  is  performed  by  Butchery 
Companies,  the  personnel  of  which  was  trained  at 
Camp  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  near  Jacksonville,  Florida, 
where  a  practical  course  of  instruction  was  given  in 
cutting  meat  by  the  so-called  "natural-guide  method." 
By  following  this  method,  which  is  an  expanding  rather 
than  a  cutting  process,  inexperienced  men  who  did  not 


152      THE  ARIMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

know  a  cleaver  from  a  skewer  were  made  into  practical 
meat-cutters  in  less  than  two  months.  The  curriculum 
of  the  School  for  Butchers  also  included  a  course  of 
intensive  training  in  the  boxing  of  boneless  frozen  beef 
by  a  method  which  saved  about  32  per  cent  storage 
and  cargo  space  and  was  used  extensively  during  the 
winter  months.  With  the  return  of  peace,  graduates 
of  this  unique  educational  institution,  many  of  them 
illiterate,  find  themselves  as  well  qualified  to  take  up 
the  butcher's  trade  as  though  they  had  wielded  a 
cleaver  and  worn  a  white  apron  all  their  lives. 

In  spite  of  all  that  has  been  written  by  travellers 
and  novelists  about  certain  American  delicacies — the 
ham  of  Virginia,  the  chicken  of  Maryland,  the  pies 
and  doughnuts  of  New  England,  the  pompano  of  New 
Orleans — the  fact  remains  that  Americans,  as  a  people, 
are  not  good  cooks.  This  assertion  may  be  ridiculed 
by  some  of  my  readers,  but,  generally  speaking,  it  is 
true.  Almost  any  Frenchman  can  prepare  from  the 
cheapest  materials  a  weU-cooked  and  tempting  meal; 
the  ability  of  most  Americans  in  the  culinary  art  is 
confined  to  boiling  eggs.  A  man  who  spends  his  days 
in  an  office  can  sit  down  to  a  breakfast  consisting  of 
soggy  biscuits,  poorly  prepared  coffee,  and  an  omelet 
that  looks  and  tastes  as  though  it  were  made  of  chrome 
leather,  and  though  it  may  affect  his  disposition  it 
will  not  seriously  affect  his  work,  for  when  the  noon- 
hour  comes  around  he  can  go  over  to  Delmonico's  or 
step  into  Childs's,  as  his  tastes  and  pocketbook  may 
dictate,  and  restore  his  balance  of  digestion  by  a  well- 
cooked  meal.     But  the  soldier  had  no  such  resource. 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  153 

There  were  no  Delmonicos  or  Childses  at  the  front. 
He  had  to  eat  what  was  given  him.  And  as  his  vigor 
and  staying  powers  depended  on  his  food,  it  was  essen- 
tial that  that  food  should  be  well  cooked.  To  tell  the 
truth,  the  Italian  debacle  of  191 7  was  due  as  much 
to  poor  and  insufficient  food  as  it  was  to  Austrian 
propaganda,  for  nothing  affects  morale  like  an  empty 
stomach. 

When  war  was  declared  the  Regular  Army  and 
the  National  Guard  already  had,  of  course,  their  com- 
plements of  experienced  cooks  and  bakers,  though  in 
wholly  insufficient  numbers,  but  the  huge  National 
Army  had  nothing  of  the  sort.  One  of  the  earliest  and 
most  pressing  problems  of  the  Quartermaster  Corps, 
therefore,  was  to  train  sufficient  numbers  of  men  for 
this  work,  which  it  did  by  expanding  the  fourteen 
Cooks'  and  Bakers'  Schools  of  the  regular  estabhshment 
to  twenty  and  by  starting  new  schools  at  the  various 
National  Army  cantonments.  Before  these  schools 
could  be  successfully  operated,  however,  it  was  neces- 
sary to  obtain  an  adequate  staff  of  instructors,  who 
themselves  had  to  be  trained,  the  plan  being  to  give  at 
least  one  officer  in  each  regiment  or  separate  battalion 
sufficient  training  to  make  him  competent  to  conduct 
a  school  for  cooks  and  bakers  in  his  owti  organization. 
As  a  result  of  this  system  of  culinary  education,  within 
a  year  after  the  first  American  troops  set  foot  in  France 
the  Quartermaster  Corps  had  trained  1,200  instructors 
in  cooking,  16,000  mess  sergeants,  and  50,000  cooks,  in 
addition  to  which  there  were  40,000  others  who,  though 
they  had  not  received  sufficient  training  to  give  them 


154      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

a  cook's  rating,  were  nevertheless  entirely  competent 
to  prepare  food.  From  the  soldiers  thus  trained  there 
were  organized  about  seven-score  Bakery  Companies, 
more  than  half  of  which  saw  service  overseas.  Now 
that  these  hundred-odd  thousand  cooks  and  bakers 
have  returned  to  civil  life,  there  is  reason  to  hope  that 
there  will  be  manifested  a  striking  improvement  in  the 
quality  of  the  national  cooking.  It  may  be  that,  as  a 
result  of  this  war-enforced  training,  we  will  be  able  to 
look  forward  to  taking  a  meal  in  a  railway  restaurant 
or  in  a  small-town  hotel  without  dread  and,  perhaps, 
even  with  pleasure. 

The  food  for  the  troops  in  cantonments,  camps, 
and  rest  billets  was,  of  course,  prepared  in  permanent 
camp-kitchens,  which  usually  possessed  all  the  facilities 
and  sometimes  a  far  greater  serving  capacity  than  the 
kitchens  of  great  hotels.  As  the  front  was  approached, 
however,  the  problem  of  preparing  food  became  in- 
creasingly difficult,  particularly  in  the  areas  which 
were  being  systematically  harassed  by  the  enemy's 
artillery  and  airplanes.  To  have  erected  kitchens  in 
such  areas  would  have  been  to  invite  their  destruction. 
In  order  to  provide  hot  food  for  soldiers  occupying 
these  exposed  positions,  as  well  as  for  troops  on  the 
march,  recourse  was  had  to  rolling  kitchens — les  cuisines 
roulantes,  as  the  French  called  them.  Each  kitchen, 
which  was  drawn  either  by  a  mule-team  or  by  a  trac- 
tor, consisted  of  a  stove  and  limber.  The  stove  con- 
tained a  bake-oven  and  three  kettles,  thus  permitting 
of  four  kinds  of  food  being  prepared  simultaneously. 
The  limber,  which  was  a  two-wheeled  cart  to  which 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  155 

the  kitchen  was  attached,  was  fitted  with  four  bread- 
boxes  which  could  also  be  used  for  water,  a  cook's 
chest  containing  a  set  of  culinary  utensils  which  would 
make  a  housewife  envious,  four  kettles,  and  four  fire- 
less  cookers.  The  fireless  cooker  was,  I  think,  first 
used  for  military  purposes  on  the  Italian  Front;  at 
least  that  was  where  I  first  saw  it.  It  was  an  invalu- 
able contrivance,  as  it  permitted  food  to  be  prepared 
many  hours  in  advance  in  the  back  areas  and  yet  served 
piping  hot  to  the  men  on  the  firing-line. 

For  use  under  hea\y  fire  or  other  conditions  which 
made  it  impossible  to  serve  the  men  with  hot  food 
from  the  rolling  kitchens,  the  trench  ration,  consisting 
of  tinned  meat,  hard  bread,  and  soluble  coffee,  together 
with  salt  and  sugar,  was  designed.  The  food  was 
packed  in  hermetically  sealed,  gas-proof,  camouflaged 
iron  containers,  each  of  which  held  twenty-five  ra- 
tions, each  ration  in  turn  consisting  of  enough  food 
to  maintain  a  soldier  for  one  day,  sustaining  his  full 
strength  and  vigor.  The  food  used  in  the  trench  ra- 
tion was  the  very  best  that  money  could  buy.  In- 
deed, it  became  a  matter  of  pride  with  the  employees 
of  the  great  plants  where  the  trench  rations  were 
prepared  to  use  exceptional  care  in  selecting  the  in- 
gredients for  them,  for  it  was  realized  what  good  food 
meant  to  the  tired  and  mud-caked  men  who  were  hold- 
ing the  Frontier  of  Freedom.  The  office  force  of  one 
of  the  big  packing-houses  learned  from  a  shipping- 
clerk  that  the  interstices  between  the  tins  in  the 
packing-cases  were  being  filled  with  excelsior,  so  they 
took  up  a  collection,  to  which  every  one  from  presi- 


156      THE   ARIMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

dent  to  office-boy  contributed,  and  used  the  money 
to  fill  those  interstices  with  tobacco  and  cigarettes. 
WTien  the  officers  of  the  Subsistence  Division  heard 
of  this  they  thought  so  well  of  the  idea  that  orders 
were  issued  that  the  empty  space  in  all  trench-ration 
containers  should  be  filled  with  tobacco  thereafter. 
Scores  of  such  incidents,  trivial  enough  in  themselves, 
showed  how  the  hearts  and  thoughts  of  the  nation 
were  with  the  boys  who  were  fighting  overseas. 

Ever}^  American  soldier  when  he  went  into  ac- 
tion carried  in  the  upper  left-hand  pocket  of  his  blouse 
a  small  flat  tin — no  larger  than  the  pocket  Bible  which 
the  sob-story  writers  always  place  in  that  same  pocket 
to  stop  the  fatal  bullet — bearing  on  its  lid  the  legend: 
"U.  S.  Army  Emergency  Ration.  Not  to  be  opened 
except  by  order  of  an  officer,  or  in  extremity."  This 
was  the  American  equivalent  of  the  "starvation  ra- 
tion" of  the  European  armies.  To  it  many  a  man 
caught  in  a  shell-hole  between  the  lines  or  lost  in  the 
Forest  of  the  Argonne  owed  his  life.  Its  contents 
represented  the  results  of  many  experiments  and  much 
experience  and  the  combined  suggestions  of  scientists, 
food  experts,  and  soldiers.  The  emergency  ration  con- 
sists of  three  rather  dubious-looking  cakes  of  prepared 
beef  combined  with  a  bread  compound  made  of  ground 
cooked  wheat,  weighing  three  ounces  each,  three 
ounces  of  chocolate,  three-quarters  of  an  ounce  of  fine 
salt,  and  a  dram  of  black  pepper.  There  are  almost 
as  many  ways  of  preparing  the  ration  as  there  are  of 
preparing  an  egg.  The  bread-and-meat  cakes  can 
be  eaten  dry — provided  one  is  sufficiently  near  starva- 


THE   ''Q.  M.  C."  157 

tion.  When  boiled  in  three  pints  of  water  they  make 
a  palatable  soup,  and  when  the  water  was  obtained, 
as  was  frequently  the  case,  from  shell-holes  and  ditches, 
the  pepper  and  salt  served  to  disguise  the  muddy  flavor. 
Where  water  was  scarce,  only  a  pint  of  it  was  needed 
to  transform  the  cake  into  a  sort  of  porridge,  some- 
thing like  cornmeal  mush,  which  could  be  eaten  hot 
or  cold  or  which  could  be  sliced  and  fried,  circum- 
stances and  the  Germans  permitting.  The  chocolate 
could  be  made  into  a  drink  by  dissolving  it  in  hot 
water,  or  it  could  be  eaten  as  candy. 

Candy,  by  the  way,  formed  one  of  the  most  ac- 
ceptable items  of  the  American  soldier's  ration,  half 
a  pound  being  issued  to  each  man  every  ten  days.  In 
December,  1918,  the  Subsistence  Division  shipped  to 
the  A.  E.  F.  more  than  10,000,000  pounds  of  candy — 
the  largest  exportation  of  its  kind  on  record.  Don't 
get  the  idea  that  this  was  "grocer's  candy" — the  kind 
that  comes  in  wooden  buckets.  It  was  nothing  of 
the  sort.  No  society  girl,  sitting  in  a  box  at  a  matinee, 
munched  better  chocolates  than  the  American  sol- 
dier. Moreover,  the  same  chocolates  which  sold  for 
a  dollar  a  pound  in  the  candy-stores  of  America  could 
be  bought  for  forty-eight  cents  a  pound  in  the  can- 
teens of  the  A.  E.  F.  Stick-candy  and  lemon-drops 
which  ordinarily  sold  for  seventy  cents  a  pound  at 
home  were  sold  to  the  soldiers  for  twenty-eight  cents. 
I  say  sold^  for  the  pound  and  a  half  of  candy  which 
was  a  part  of  tvexy  soldier's  ration  rarely  satisfied 
the  sweet  tooth  of  the  doughboy.  Though  ever}'-thing 
in  the  confectionery  line  from  peppermints  to  caramels 


158      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

was  provided,  lemon-drops  were  the  soldier's  favorite. 
They  were  to  the  Yankee  doughboy  what  gum-drops 
were  to  Doctor  Cook's  Esquimaux.  They  devoured 
them  at  the  rate  of  a  hundred  tons  a  month !  At  the 
beginning  of  the  war  it  was  found  that  most  of  the 
lemon-drops  manufactured  for  the  commercial  market, 
being  made  of  glucose  and  inferior  or  imitation  fruit 
flavors,  were  not  of  good  enough  quality  for  the  sol- 
diers. So  lemon-drops  of  the  most  expensive  kind — • 
the  kind  that  they  sell  in  the  smart  shops  on  Fifth 
Avenue  and  Tremont  Street  and  Michigan  Boulevard 
— were  adopted  as  a  standard,  the  recipes  for  making 
them  being  distributed  to  a  number  of  candy  manu- 
facturers. Now  the  lemon-drops  for  the  army  are 
made  from  pure  granulated  sugar  and  flavored  with 
an  emulsion  made  from  the  rind  of  the  lemon.  The 
sourer  they  are  the  better,  say  the  soldiers.  So  great 
became  the  demand  for  candy — which,  by  the  way, 
is  of  great  value  in  rebuilding  wasted  tissues — that 
the  Chief  Quartermaster  of  the  A.  E.  F.  took  over  a 
number  of  French  candy  factories  and,  using  Amer- 
ican sugar,  manufactured  huge  quantities  of  candy 
for  our  troops  in  France. 

Tobacco  was  a  recognized  item  in  the  ration  of 
the  A.  E.  F.,  statistics  showing  that  95  per  cent  of 
the  men  used  it  in  one  form  or  another — which  serves 
to  show  how  the  soldier  vote  would  go  should  the  re- 
formers ever  attempt  to  saddle  the  Constitution  with 
an  antitobacco  amendment.  To  men  enduring  great 
physical  hardships,  obliged  to  live  without  the  com- 
forts and  frequently  without  the  necessities  of  life, 
and  always  under  the  terrific  strain  imposed  by  war. 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  159 

tobacco  fills  a  need  which  nothing  else  can  satisfy. 
In  view  of  this,  it  was  decided  to  adopt  the  practice 
of  our  allies  and  allow  each  soldier  a  certain  amount 
of  tobacco  a  day,  the  ration  being  four  cigarettes,  four 
ounces  of  chewing-tobacco,  or  four  ounces  of  smoking- 
tobacco,  and  one  hundred  papers.  Though  cigars 
were  not  included  in  the  army  ration,  they  could  be 
purchased  at  the  Quartermaster  stores  in  France  at 
astonishingly  low  prices.  Havana  cigars  were  sold  at 
the  same  price  which  the  government  paid  for  them  in 
Cuba,  there  being  no  tax  or  import  duty,  no  charge  for 
transportation,  and  no  middleman's  profit.  Smokers 
of  cigars  will  appreciate  how  cheap  they  were  when 
I  mention  that  at  the  commissaries  in  France  I  paid 
eighteen  cents  apiece  for  Corona  Coronas.  In  order 
to  provide  "smokes"  for  the  army,  the  entire  stocks 
of  several  of  the  largest  cigarette  and  tobacco  manu- 
facturers were  commandeered — a  fact  with  which 
they  quickly  acquainted  the  public  in  their  advertising. 
A  single  purchase  consisted  of  3,000,000,000  cigarettes 
— enough  to  provide  two  "fags"  for  approximately 
every  human  being  on  the  globe.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  old  army  and  the  new  was  strikingly  illus- 
trated by  the  difference  in  their  choice  of  tobacco. 
The  soldier  of  the  old  army  was  most  strongly  ad- 
dicted to  the  use  of  that  unlovely  article  known  as 
"plug" — thereby  giving  steady  employment  to  the 
spittoon-makers.  The  men  of  our  new  armies,  how- 
ever, expressed  an  overvvhelming  preference  for  the 
cigarette.  Thus  does  tobacco  gauge  the  progress  of 
civilization ! 

A  close  third  to  tobacco  and  candy  in  the  affections 


i6o      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

of  the  soldiers  was  chewing-gum.  Three  and  a  hall 
milKon  packages  of  the  shop-girl's  delight  were  sent 
overseas  during  the  month  of  January  alone.  Chew- 
ing-gum has  come,  indeed,  to  be  regarded  as  little 
short  of  a  necessity  for  the  soldier,  both  because  of  its 
\'alue  as  a  substitute  for  water — it  is  estimated  that 
250  pounds  of  chewing-gum  will  save  100  gallons  of 
water  when  it  is  needed  most — and  because  it  is  a  heat 
and  energy  producer.  During  intensive  drilling,  prac- 
tice firing,  and  on  marches  the  more  gum  a  man  chews 
the  less  water  he  drinks — obviously  a  highly  important 
consideration,  for  at  the  front  water  is  usually  scarce 
and  difficult  to  obtain.  Curiously  enough,  the  con- 
sumption of  gum  is  heavier  in  winter  than  in  summer, 
this  doubtless  being  due,  as  I  have  already  mentioned, 
to  the  fact  that  it  is  a  heat-producer.  It  took  the 
British,  oddly  enough,  to  devise  a  novel  and  interesting 
use  for  chewing-gum  which  was  later  adopted  by  cer- 
tain of  our  own  commanders.  Just  before  an  attack, 
when  the  assaulting  battalions  were  formed  up  on  the 
tapes  waiting  for  the  word  which  would  send  them 
over  the  top,  the  enemy's  scouts,  prowling  in  No  Man's 
Land,  frequently  detected  the  presence  of  the  waiting 
troops  by  their  subdued  chorus  of  coughing.  A  British 
officer  who  had  been  in  the  United  States  evolved  the 
idea  of  stopping  these  betraying  coughs  by  giving  every 
man  a  stick  of  chewing-gum.  So  Messrs.  Wrigley, 
Beeman,  White,  and  Adams  may  congratulate  them- 
selves on  having  "done  their  bit"  toward  walloping 
the  Hun. 

My  mention  of  a  chorus  of  coughs  naturally  sug- 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  i6i 

gests  the  subject  of  music,  which  was  another  of  the 
multitudinous  activities  of  the  Quartermaster  Corps. 
By  this  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  "Q.  M." 
furnished  the  army  with  bands,  for  it  did  not,  but  it 
did  supply  the  bands  of  the  army  with  instruments 
and  music.  Music,  you  must  understand,  was  one  of 
the  most  important  factors  in  the  maintenance  of  that 
intangible  something  called  morale.  It  was  a  curious 
characteristic  of  the  American  psychology  that  when 
a  homesick  soldier  heard  a  band  playing  "Home,  Sweet 
Home,"  or  ''When  You  Come  Back,"  or  ''Keep  the 
Home  Fires  Burning,"  it  did  not  increase  his  home- 
sickness. It  had,  instead,  precisely  the  opposite  effect : 
it  cheered  him  up !  Recognizing  this,  the  military 
authorities  saw  to  it  that  bands  were  stationed  in  every 
town  and  hamlet  in  France  where  any  considerable 
body  of  troops  was  billeted.  By  the  last  summer  of 
the  war  we  had  in  France  nearly  400  bands,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  musical  organizations  improvised  by 
the  various  units.  As  a  result,  the  French  inhabitants 
of  the  zones  in  which  our  armies  were  operating  be- 
came as  familiar  with  "Over  There,"  "Good  Morn- 
ing, Mr.  Zip-zip-zip,"  and  particularly  with  "Oh,  How 
I  Hate  to  Get  Up  in  the  Morning,"  which  was  the 
soldier's  favorite  because  it  so  satisfyingly  expressed 
his  feelings,  as  they  were  with  the  "Marseillaise." 
The  American  Army  was,  indeed,  as  noticeable  for 
its  musical  proclivities  as  the  French  Arm}-  was  for 
its  total  absence  of  them.  Ours  was  a  whistling,  sing- 
ing army,  if  ever  there  was  one,  though  for  some  reason 
it  seemed  to  delight  in  plaintive,  melancholy  tunes. 


1 62      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Many  and  many  a  time  I  have  heard  a  column  coming 
down  a  road  in  the  darkness,  the  softly  whistled  chorus 
of  ''The  Long,  Long  Trail"  rising  above  the  clink  of 
accoutrements  and  the  slog-slog-slog  of  marching  feet. 

In  the  early  summer  of  19 18  the  Quartermaster- 
General  received  a  cable  from  General  Pershing  re- 
questing that  $50,000  worth  of  sheet-music  for  the 
bands  of  the  A.  E.  F.  be  shipped  without  delay.  As 
the  chief  of  the  purchasing  unit,  to  whom  the  order 
was  turned  over,  did  not  feel  qualified  to  select  the 
music  for  some  3,000,000  of  his  fighting  countrymen, 
he  delegated  the  task  to  a  committee  consisting  of 
Lieutenant  R.  C.  Deming,  bandmaster  at  Camp  Meigs, 
Mr.  Ward  Stephens,  the  noted  organist  and  authority 
on  music,  and  Irving  Berlin,  the  most  famous  com- 
poser of  popular  music  in  America,  who  was  at  that 
time  a  sergeant  in  the  Coast  Guard  but  who  was  bor- 
rowed from  that  organization  by  the  Quartermaster 
Corps.  The  selection  and  classification  of  this  great 
mass  of  music — the  largest  single  order  of  its  kind 
ever  given — necessitated  the  committee  working  al- 
most night  and  day  for  weeks,  it  being  enormously 
assisted  in  its  task  by  the  enthusiastic  co-operation  of 
the  various  music  printers  and  publishers,  both  of 
these  trades  making  great  financial  sacrifices  in  order 
to  promote  the  pleasure  and  inspiration  of  the  boys 
overseas. 

Have  you  ever  gone  into  one  of  those  huge  empo- 
riums which  make  a  specialty  of  supplying  equipment 
for  sportsmen,  to  purchase  an  outfit  preparatory  to  a 
fishing-trip  in  Canada  or  a  shooting  expedition  in  the 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  163 

Rockies?  If  so,  you  will  remember  how  much  time 
and  thought  you  devoted  to  comparing  the  merits  of 
the  various  tj^es  of  clothing  and  other  equipment 
which  you  were  shown.  It  probably  took  you  the 
better  part  of  an  hour  to  decide  whether  you  would 
be  more  comfortable  wearing  Canadian  shoepacks  or 
hobnailed  ankle-boots.  You  had  a  long  discussion 
with  the  salesman  as  to  the  relative  merits  of  whip- 
cord, Harris  tweed,  and  gabardine.  Even  making  the 
choice  between  a  slouch  hat  and  a  cloth  cap  presented 
a  perplexing  problem.  But  this  was  only  the  begin- 
ning, for  you  had  to  decide  on  a  rain-coat,  a  tent,  a 
cot,  blankets,  pillows,  cartridge-belts,  fly-books,  cook- 
ing utensils,  and  heaven  knows  what  besides.  And 
after  you  had  made  your  final  decision  you  were  prob- 
ably far  from  being  satisfied  with  what  you  had  se- 
lected. Yet  this  outfit,  over  which  you  had  spent  so 
much  thought,  was,  probably,  to  be  used  only  during 
a  brief  summer's  vacation.  Picture,  then,  the  task 
faced  by  the  Quartermaster  Corps  when  it  was  sud- 
denly called  upon  to  provide  complete  equipment  for 
some  4,000,000  men  for  an  indefinite  period.  At  first 
thought  it  might  seem  easy  enough  to  purchase  cloth- 
ing for  soldiers — a  coat,  a  pair  of  breeches,  an  over- 
coat, a  hat,  and  a  pair  of  shoes  for  each  man — until 
you  are  reminded  that  no  one  of  these  simple  articles 
of  uniform  was  standard  for  civilian  use,  either  in  ma- 
terial, pattern,  or  color.  Everything  had  to  be  made 
to  order.  Everything  had,  moreover,  to  be  better 
made  than  if  it  were  intended  for  civihan  use,  for  the 
men  for  whom  these  articles  were  intended  were  not 


i64      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE   ARMY 

going  out  to  shoot  elk  or  catch  trout;  they  were  going 
to  a  country  3,000  miles  away  for  the  purpose  of  killing 
Germans,  and  no  one  could  say  how  long  the  business 
would  take  them.  It  was  a  Titanic  task,  this  equipping 
of  the  men  who  took  up  arms  against  Germany.  The 
organization  which  handled  the  buying  end  of  it  was 
roughly  as  follows:  in  Washington  the  Clothing  and 
Equipage  Division  of  the  Ofhce  of  the  Director  of  Pur- 
chase, where  all  the  activities  were  centralized;  in 
Philadelphia  a  purchasing  office,  which  was  a  branch 
of  the  great  Quartermaster  Depot  in  that  city,  and 
in  New  York  a  procurement  office  which  kept  con- 
stantly in  touch  with  the  raw-material  markets  of  the 
world. 

The  innumerable  special-service  units  which  were 
constantly  being  added  to  the  rapidly  expanding  army 
required  all  sorts  of  strange,  new  equipment  and 
special  clothing.  The  cooks  and  bakers  had  to  have 
cotton  aprons  and  the  blacksmiths  leather  ones.  The 
linemen  of  the  telegraph  battahons  had  to  have  special 
gloves.  Hoods  were  needed  for  the  motorcycle  des- 
patch-riders, overalls  for  the  men  of  the  stevedore 
battalions,  helmets  for  the  camp  firemen,  garments  of 
fur  and  leather  for  the  flying-men.  The  prisoners 
began  to  come  streaming  in  and  for  them  had  to  be 
designed  clothing  which  would  insure  their  speedy 
recognition  and  recapture  in  case  they  attempted  to 
escape.  The  convalescents  at  the  hospitals  needed 
special  suits.  The  expeditionary  troops  sent  to  Siberia 
and  the  Murman  Coast  required  outfits  which  would 
keep   them   warm   through   the   long   arctic   winters. 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  165 

And  uniforms  had  to  be  provided  for  the  army's 
women  nurses.  Besides  this  vast  quantity  of  clothing 
there  were  tents  to  be  provided,  cots,  blankets,  towels, 
shaving  outfits,  brown-canvas  bags  for  filtering  water, 
and  the  blue-denim  bags  in  which  the  soldiers  kept 
their  personal  belongings.  These  things  were  not  in 
existence  anywhere;  they  had  to  be  made  from  the 
outset.  To  produce  them  in  the  enormous  quantities 
required,  not  only  took  the  maximum  output  of  all  the 
factories  and  mills  already  engaged  in  the  manufacture 
of  such  articles,  but  hundreds  of  other  plants  had  to 
change  over  their  machinery  in  order  to  meet  the 
army's  needs,  and  the  Quartermaster  Corps  had  to 
send  experts  to  give  instruction  at  these  plants  in  the 
new  manufacturing  processes  and  methods.  Nor  was 
it  enough  for  the  Quartermaster  Corps  to  thus  become 
itself  a  manufacturer  of  clothing  and  equipment.  It 
had  to  manufacture  the  cloth  used  in  the  clothing,  and, 
going  still  further,  it  had  to  provide  the  raw  cotton 
and  wool  used  in  making  the  cloth,  as  well  as  the  hides 
for  the  leather  used  in  the  shoes.  And  it  had  to  pro- 
duce this  staggering  volume  of  equipment  quickly,  for 
the  Germans  would  not  wait.  It  was  compelled, 
moreover,  to  make  its  purchases  in  a  market  glutted 
with  orders  from  the  Allied  governments  and  from  the 
domestic  trade.  And,  to  increase  the  difficulties  under 
which  the  corps  labored,  it  had  to  buy  on  credit,  and 
to  do  so  in  the  face  of  cash  competition,  for  Congress 
did  not  make  sufficient  funds  available  until  twelve 
weeks  after  the  declaration  of  war.  Nevertheless,  the 
whole  enormous  undertaking  was  successfully  carried 


i66      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

through,  and,  save  in  rare  instances,  the  soldiers  never 
lacked  for  clothing  or  other  Q.  M.  supplies. 

Wool  was  the  most  important  of  the  raw  products 
to  be  procured,  since  it  entered  into  the  composition 
of  more  items  than  any  other  material.  Soon  after 
the  declaration  of  war  the  Quartermaster  Department 
estimated  that  about  100,000,000  pounds  of  scoured 
wool  would  be  required  to  meet  the  initial  demands  of 
the  army.  An  inventory  of  all  wool  supplies,  includ- 
ing wool  ordered  from  abroad  as  well  as  the  stocks  on 
hand  in  this  country,  revealed  the  startling  fact  that 
there  was  in  sight  only  about  35,000,000  pounds — 
barely  more  than  a  third  of  the  amount  needed.  To 
insure  the  procurement  of  this  wool  and  to  head  off 
speculation  in  domestic  wool  prices,  for  the  American 
sheep  were  then  about  to  be  sheared,  the  government 
itself,  in  July,  191 7,  entered  the  wool  business.  It 
immediately  optioned  practically  all  the  wool  in  the 
hands  of  all  the  dealers  in  the  United  States;  it  fixed  a 
price  for  the  domestic  supply  for  the  ensuing  year;  it 
arranged  to  procure  the  entire  191 7  clip  if  needed;  it 
took  over  all  wool  under  import  licenses,  and  it  sent  its 
buyers  to  South  America  and  the  other  foreign  markets. 
There  was  a  wool  administrator  to  buy  wool,  a  wool- 
purchasing  quartermaster  to  pay  for  it,  and  a  wool 
distributor  to  sell  it  to  the  government  contractors. 
Within  a  year  the  Clothing  and  Equipage  Division  had 
absorbed  the  entire  wool  trade  of  the  United  States. 
In  fact,  there  was  no  wool  market  again  and  no  pubHc 
sale  of  wool  until  after  the  signing  of  the  Armistice. 

The  largest  of  the  foreign  markets  which  was  avail- 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  167 

able  from  the  standpoint  of  accessibility  was  the  Ar- 
gentine. Australia  and  New  Zealand  were,  of  course, 
enormous  markets,  but  the  shortage  of  tonnage  made 
it  impossible  to  spare  many  bottoms  for  the  long  voy- 
age to  the  antipodes.  As  a  result  of  the  shipping  situ- 
ation, when  the  fighting  ceased  there  was  an  appalling 
shortage  of  wool  everywhere  in  the  world  except  in 
Australia  and  New  Zealand.  America  was  short  of 
wool,  there  was  a  little  in  England,  France  had  practi- 
cally none,  and  in  Germany  and  Austria  there  was 
none  at  all.  But  Australia  and  New  Zealand  had  a 
billion  pounds — and  no  ships. 

At  first  the  better  grades  of  wool  appeared  to  be 
adequate  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  army,  but  later 
changes  were  made  in  the  specifications  for  various 
cloths — uniform  cloth  being  increased  from  16  to  20 
ounces,  overcoating  from  30  to  32  ounces,  shirting 
flannel  from  8>^  to  9^2  ounces,  and  blankets  from 
3  to  4  pounds — which  made  it  necessary  to  utilize 
grades  of  wool  which  previously  had  been  used  only 
in  coarse  materials,  such  as  carpet.  In  order  to  obtain 
the  necessary  weight  and  warmth,  the  lower  grades  of 
wool  were  blended  with  the  higher  grades,  though  this 
frequently  entailed  a  sacrifice  of  fineness  of  texture  and 
appearance.  This  explains  why  many  of  the  uniforms 
worn  by  our  returning  soldiers  looked  rough  and  un- 
even in  color.  But  the  necessary  cloth  was  provided 
and  it  was  warm  and  it  wore  well.  The  trouble  was 
that  it  was  not  provided  soon  enough.  During  the 
autumn  of  191 7  and  the  succeeding  winter  thousands 
of  our  soldiers,  both  in  France  and  in  the  camps  at 


i68      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

home,  did  not  have  sufficient  clothing  to  keep  them 
dry  or  warm.  Hundreds  of  American  soldiers  went 
into  action  wearing  British  uniforms — even  to  the 
buttons  bearing  the  royal  cipher  and  crown ! 

The  Quartermaster  Corps  introduced  endless  econ- 
omies in  order  to  save  wool.  More  economical  pat- 
terns were  made  for  uniforms.  Originally  1.45  yards 
of  cloth  were  required  to  make  a  pair  of  wool  breeches. 
A  cheaper  cutting  pattern  reduced  this  figure  to  1.222 
yards,  thus  saving  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  yard  of  cloth 
on  every  pair.  Since  the  purchases  of  wool  breeches 
amounted  to  10,300,000  pairs,  this  single  economy 
resulted  in  a  saving  of  over  2,300,000  yards  of  cloth 
on  breeches  alone.  It  was  also  found  that  cotton  lin- 
ings could  be  substituted  for  the  wool  facings  of  coats 
and  overcoats  without  sacrificing  either  serviceability 
or  warmth.  Another  important  cloth  economy  came 
when  the  designers  of  the  Clothing  and  Equipage  Divi- 
sion eliminated  the  right-hand  pocket  of  the  ''0.  D." 
shirt  on  the  ground  that  this  pocket  was  not  used 
enough  to  justify  the  additional  expense. 

Americans  have  always  believed,  or  pretended  to 
believe,  that,  so  far  as  the  uniforms  of  our  fighting 
forces  are  concerned,  smartness  is  not  essential.  This 
is  a  mental  attitude  which  we  inherit,  no  doubt,  from 
our  pioneering  forefathers,  and  which  was  strength- 
ened by  those  Civil  and  Spanish  War  generals  who 
tucked  their  trousers  in  their  boots,  pulled  their  slouch 
hats  over  their  eyes,  and  wore  handkerchiefs  instead 
of  collars.  So,  when  the  first  contingents  of  the  Ex- 
peditionary  Forces  set  sail  for  France,  we  excused 


THE   ''Q.  M.  C."  169 

the  obvious  shortcomings  of  their  uniforms  by  assert- 
ing that  they  "looked  businesslike  and  American" — 
an  assertion  which  was,  however,  open  to  some  doubt. 
If  our  soldiers  looked  military — mid  they  did — it  was 
not  because  of  their  uniforms  but  in  spite  of  them. 
No  one  recognized  more  quickly  than  the  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  A.  E.  F.  that  the  uniform  of  the  Amer- 
ican soldier  was  lamentably  lacking  in  smartness,  a 
lack  which  was  made  painfully  apparent  when  it  was 
contrasted  with  those  worn  by  the  soldiers  of  the  .Al- 
lied nations.  When,  therefore,  General  Pershing 
recommended  the  adoption  of  a  smarter-looking  uni- 
form, the  Clothing  and  Equipage  Division  undertook 
to  design  one,  with,  incidentally,  an  eye  to  the  saving 
of  cloth.  The  coat  of  the  uniform,  formerly  called 
the  blouse — a  ridiculous  and  inappropriate  designa- 
tion which  is  now  obsolete — was  cut  with  new  lines 
which  made  it  slimmer  and  more  graceful  while  re- 
taining all  the  warmth  and  comfort  of  the  old  garment. 
As  the  soldiers  usually  filled  the  patch-pockets  of  their 
old  blouses  with  all  sorts  of  articles  they  were  usually 
unsightly  bulges,  but  on  the  new  coat  the  patch-pocket 
is  retained  only  in  appearance,  the  pocket  actually 
being  on  the  inside.  It  is  not  known  to  most  Amer- 
icans that  the  breeches  which  had  been  worn  by  Amer- 
ican soldiers  for  twenty  years  or  more  have  been 
replaced  by  trousers  so  far  as  the  A.  E.  F.  is  con- 
cerned. The  soldiers  themselves  were  not  particularly 
enamored  of  the  breeches,  which  frequently  caused 
chafing  under  the  knee  and  always  caused  a  burst  of 
expletives  when  a  man  tried  to  put  them  on  in  a  hurr>'. 


I70 


THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 


Moreover,  it  was  often  found  impossible  for  the  sur- 
geons to  remove  breeches  from  a  man  wounded  in 
the  legs  without  cutting  the  cloth  and  thereby  ruining 
the  garment.  All  these  objections  have  been  obviated, 
however,  by  the  adoption  of  trousers,  which  have  the 
added  value  of  increased  warmth.  Following  General 
Pershing's  recommendations,  the  overcoat,  which  was 
much  too  long  to  be  worn  in  the  trenches,  was  rede- 
signed, a  new  garment  being  evolved  which  was  smarter 
and  more  practical.  Other  changes  are  the  adoption  of 
the  spu-al  woollen  puttee  in  place  of  the  canvas  legging 
and  the  substitution  of  the  jaunty  overseas  cap  for  the 
impractical  and  universally  unbecoming  campaign  hat. 
The  redesigning  of  the  uniform — which,  by  the 
way,  never  appeared  in  the  field — accomplished  several 
surprising  economies.  Merely  by  the  substitution  of 
trousers  for  breeches,  the  lacings,  eyelets,  tape,  and 
stays  thus  eliminated  amounted  to  95^  cents  on  each 
garment,  and  had  the  war  lasted  until  July  i,  19 19, 
would  have  saved  the  taxpayer  nearly  $17,000,000 
on  orders  placed  or  in  sight.  The  change  in  the  de- 
sign of  the  overcoat  saved  62  cents  per  garment — an 
estimated  saving,  by  July  i,  of  nearly  $900,000.  It 
was  found  that  the  service  coat  could  be  made  for 
$1.60  less  than  the  old  blouse,  which  by  July  i  would 
have  effected  an  economy  of  close  to  $5,000,000.  The 
changes  in  these  three  garments  not  only  gave  the 
American  soldier  a  much  better-looking  uniform  but 
it  saved  the  American  Government  enough  money 
to  build  a  first-class  battleship,  and,  what  was  most 
important  of  all,  it  effected  an  enormous  economy  in 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  171 

the  consumption  of  raw  wool,  which,  once  exhausted, 
could  not  be  replaced  with  all  the  money  on  earth. 

In  making  its  earlier  clothing  contracts  the  gov- 
ernment paid  the  contractor  a  percentage  of  the  value 
of  the  yardage  which  he  saved  by  his  economy  in  cut- 
ting and  it  also  permitted  him  to  keep  his  own  clippings. 
But  later  on,  when  the  shortage  in  wool  became  more 
acute,  the  cloth  issued  to  the  contractor  was  calculated 
more  closely,  he  received  no  credit  for  his  savings,  and 
all  clippings  had  to  be  turned  in.  These  clippings  were 
sent  to  the  base  sorting-plant  in  New  York,  where 
they  were  baled  and  shipped  to  mills  to  be  used  as 
reworked  wool,  in  blankets  and  other  articles.  From 
September,  191 7,  to  December,  1918,  this  plant  handled 
over  17,000,000  pounds  of  wool  clippings,  the  total 
sales  of  which  produced  $5,500,000. 

Wool  was  not  only  made  up  into  clothing  but  it 
went  into  such  knit  goods  as  undershirts,  drawers, 
stockings,  gloves,  and  puttees.  This  branch  of  the 
war  woollen-goods  industry  found  itself  confronted 
with  a  serious  problem  in  the  lack  of  suitable  machinery, 
for  though  there  were  numerous  manufacturers  of 
knit  goods,  their  mills  had  been  devoted  to  the  pro- 
duction of  specialties,  such  as  men's  union  suits  and 
women's  underwear.  These  concerns  had,  therefore, 
to  make  great  changes  in  their  machinery,  and  some- 
times to  remodel  their  plants,  before  they  could  knit 
underclothing  in  the  sizes  required  for  the  army. 
Toward  the  close  of  the  war  ever}'  machine  in  the 
United  States  that  could  make  hosiery  was  knitting 
socks  for  soldiers. 


172      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

At  one  time  there  was  a  serious  shortage  of  needles, 
which  we  had  formerly  obtained  from  Germany.  When 
this  source  of  supply  was  cut  off  we  turned  to  Japan, 
but  the  Japanese  needles  proved  anything  but  satis- 
f actor}':  they  were  not  properly  tempered  and  their 
frequent  breakage  caused  much  loss  and  delay.  A 
rumor  reached  the  ears  of  the  Quartermaster- General 
that  there  were  10,000,000  knitting-needles  in  Sweden, 
whereupon  purchasing  agents  were  despatched  to 
Scandinavia  post-haste.  They  returned  a  few  weeks 
later  bringing  with  them  a  million  needles,  which  helped 
to  relieve  the  situation,  the  American  needle-makers 
meanwhile  being  pushed  to  the  limit. 

Though  the  production  of  the  regulation  service 
uniform  constituted  the  bulk  of  the  Manufacturing 
Branch's  activities,  it  was  by  no  means  the  whole  of 
them.  It  went  into  an  entirely  new  field,  for  example, 
when  it  bought  uniforms  for  the  women  nurses  of  the 
army.  There  was  a  trim  little  Norfolk  suit  of  navy 
blue  which  cost  the  government  about  thirty  dollars; 
a  cotton  uniform  for  indoor  wear  that  cost  three  dollars; 
a  long,  belted  ulster  costing  in  the  neighborhood  of 
twenty-eight  dollars;  to  say  nothing  of  blouses  made 
from  navy-blue  silk,  jaunty  hats  of  blue  velour,  stout 
tan  walking-boots,  and  hospital  shoes  of  white  canvas. 
When  it  came  to  lingerie,  however,  the  "Q.  M."  balked. 
It  permitted  the  nurses  to  purchase  that  for  them- 
selves. 

Then  there  was  the  special  clothing  required  for 
the  soldiers  fighting  on  the  Siberian  steppes  and  the 
frozen    wastes   around    Archangel.      These   garments 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  173 

were  designed  by  men  who  had  had  experience  in  the 
arctic  and  were  intimately  familiar  with  the  peculiar 
conditions  existing  on  the  world's  remotest  battle-line. 
Our  soldiers  in  Russia  were  supplied  with  caps  and 
mittens  made  from  muskrat  fur,  overcoats  of  mole- 
skin or  of  duck  Hned  with  sheepskin,  Alaskan  parkas 
with  hoods  lined  with  the  fur  of  the  wolf,  woodsmen's 
heavy  knee-length  socks,  Canadian  shoepacks,  such 
as  the  trappers  and  voyageurs  wear  in  the  Northern 
woods,  and  special  heavy  underwear.  These  outfits, 
which  cost  about  a  hundred  dollars  each,  were  sup- 
plied to  approximately  15,000  men. 

And,  finally,  there  was  the  clothing  for  prisoners 
of  war  and  interned  enemy  aliens.  This  was  not  manu- 
factured for  the  purpose  but,  instead,  the  uniforms  dis- 
carded by  our  own  men  were  dry-cleaned,  repaired,  and 
dyed  a  special  shade  of  green — a  glaring  emerald-green 
— so  that  the  wearer  could  be  distinguished  as  a  prisoner 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  see  him.  I  remember  watching 
a  column  of  German  prisoners  leaving  the  prison 
stockade  near  Atlanta  one  morning  on  their  way  to 
work.  In  the  front  rank,  his  red  mustache  bristling 
fiercely,  was  a  peculiarly  haughty  and  insolent  head 
steward  whom  I  had  known  in  those  days,  now  long 
past,  when  self-respecting  persons  crossed  the  At- 
lantic on  German  liners.  He  was  fatter  than  when  I 
had  last  seen  him,  and  in  his  bright-green  prisoner's  uni- 
form he  looked  for  all  the  world  like  an  animated  cab- 
bage. There  is  a  certain  appropriateness  in  the  fact 
that  the  uniforms  with  which  we  supplied  our  captured 
Germans  cost  the  government  just  thirty  cents  apiece. 


174      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

For  more  than  forty  years  the  woollen  shirts  worn 
by  American  soldiers  have  been  made  at  the  great 
Quartermaster  Depot  at  Jeffersonville,  in  southern 
Indiana.  In  order  to  give  employment  to  as  many 
of  those  who  needed  it  as  possible,  it  has  always  been 
the  policy  of  the  depot  to  distribute  the  sewing  of  the 
shirts  among  the  women  of  the  conamunity,  so,  upon 
the  outbreak  of  war,  there  were  some  2,000  sewing 
operatives  working  for  the  government  in  or  near  Jef- 
fersonville. When  word  was  received  from  Washing- 
ton that  shirts  were  required  in  enormous  quantities 
and  with  the  least  possible  delay,  appeals  were  made 
by  means  of  posters  and  through  the  press  to  the  women 
throughout  that  region  to  increase  the  output  of  shirts 
for  our  soldiers.  The  response  was  as  quick  as  it  was 
gratifying.  Women  who  did  not  need  the  money  gave 
up  their  duties  or  their  pleasures  and  turned  to  sew- 
ing. Soon  there  was  scarcely  a  woman  along  that 
portion  of  the  Ohio  who  was  not,  like  the  industrious 
Sister  Susie,  sewing  shirts  for  soldiers.  The  number 
of  operatives  jumped  from  2,000  to  20,000  almost  over- 
night; the  yearly  output  of  shirts  rose  from  600,000 
to  8,500,000.  The  operatives  were  required  to  call 
at  the  depot,  where  unmade  garments,  which  had  al- 
ready been  cut,  were  issued  to  them,  together  with 
the  necessary  trimmings  and  a  completed  shirt  to  be 
used  as  a  guide,  the  garments  being  sewn  at  home  and 
returned  to  the  depot  for  inspection.  In  order  to  care 
for  the  thousands  of  women  who  came  flocking  into 
Jeffersonville  to  secure  shirts,  first-aid  stations  had 
to  be  established  at  the  depot.    A  Sanitary  Bureau  was 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  175 

also  organized  and  a  corps  of  sanitary  inspectors  were 
employed  to  visit  the  homes  of  all  the  operatives  to 
see  that  the  shirts  were  being  sewn  under  proper  sani- 
tary conditions.  As  a  further  precaution,  the  shirts 
were  fumigated  upon  their  return  to  the  depot,  thus 
insuring  the  soldier  against  any  risk  of  contagion  from 
this  source.  When  the  Armistice,  was  signed  the  Jef- 
ferson ville  Depot  was  the  largest  shirt-manufacturing 
establishment  in  the  world,  and  "The  Song  of  the 
Shirt"  was  heard  for  miles  up  and  down  the  banks  of 
the  Ohio. 

In  supplying  the  army  with  such  articles  as  sheets, 
pillow-cases,  towels,  gauze,  denim,  duck,  and  webbing, 
the  Cotton  Goods  Branch  of  Purchase  and  Storage 
procured  over  800,000,000  square  yards  of  cotton  tex- 
tiles— enough  to  have  covered  an  area  four  times  the 
size  of  the  District  of  Columbia.  It  also  purchased 
enormous  quantities  of  burlap  for  packing,  for  bags, 
and  for  the  use  of  the  Camouflage  Service,  as  well  as 
silk  for  flags,  hat-cords,  and  badges.  Though  it  was 
never  found  necessary  to  resort  to  the  use  of  paper 
fabrics,  the  division  had  in  its  possession  samples  of 
paper  cloth  and  articles  made  from  it  which  had  been 
captured  from  the  enemy.  These  paper  textiles  were 
carefully  analyzed  and  studied,  and  had  it  become 
necessary  to  provide  a  substitute  for  cotton,  we  were 
prepared  to  produce  one  which  would  have  astonished 
the  Germans. 

One  of  the  characteristics  of  the  equipment  of 
the  European  soldier  is  the  number  of  articles  made 


176      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

of  leather.  He  has  leather  belts,  cross-belts,  cartridge- 
belts,  bandoliers,  gun-slings,  map-cases,  knapsacks, 
sword  and  bayonet  scabbards,  chin-straps,  and  not 
infrequently  his  head-gear  is  likewise  made  of  leather. 
Not  only  is  all  this  leather  costly,  but  it  is  stiff,  heavy, 
cracks  easily,  and  requires  constant  work  to  keep  it 
clean.  Owing  to  the  extreme  scarcity  and  the  almost 
prohibitive  cost  of  leather,  its  use  was  confined  in 
the  American  Army  to  saddles,  bridles,  harness,  leg- 
gings, and  Sam  Browne  belts,  virtually  all  other  articles 
of  equipment  formerly  made  of  leather,  such  as  car- 
tridge-belts, packs,  bandoliers,  scabbards,  gun-slings, 
pistol-holsters,  and  the  like,  being  made  of  cotton  web- 
bing. To  supply  the  army's  enormous  demand  for 
these  articles  it  was  necessary  to  convert  to  the  manu- 
facture of  this  cotton  webbing  many  plants  which  had 
theretofore  been  engaged  in  the  production  of  hose, 
cotton  belting,  and  asbestos  brake  linings.  All  the 
plants  thus  adapted  to  the  emergency  manufacture 
of  webbing  were  dependent  on  purchased  yarns  which 
they  had  to  secure  in  the  open  market.  In  the  South, 
where  most  of  this  yarn  was  produced,  the  securing 
of  power  was  a  very  serious  problem.  Many  of  the 
mills  depended  upon  electricity  generated  by  water- 
power,  so  when  this  water-power  ran  very  low  it  was 
necessary  for  the  government  to  step  in  and  allocate 
the  available  power  among  the  mills  working  on  army 
contracts  according  to  the  most  pressing  needs.  Then 
there  was  the  inevitable  question  of  labor.  In  many 
of  the  plants  employees  had  to  be  given  special  courses 
of  instruction  before  they  could  produce  the  new  ma- 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  I77 

terials  on  which  they  were  set  to  work.  In  the  South, 
particularly,  much  trouble  and  delay  was  caused  by 
the  question  of  child  labor  and  the  working  hours  for 
women  and  minors,  for  in  its  later  contracts  the  gov- 
ernment inserted  clauses  insisting  on  the  observance 
of  certain  regulations  designed  to  benefit  and  protect 
the  workers.  In  some  instances  contracts  were  re- 
turned to  the  government  because  of  this  child-labor 
clause,  whereupon  orders  were  issued  virtually  com- 
pelling the  mills  to  produce  the  goods  called  for,  whether 
they  wanted  to  or  not.  I  doubt  if  any  government  in 
the  world,  while  engaged  in  a  life-and-death  struggle, 
would  have  found  time  to  show  such  solicitude  for  the 
weakest  and  least  influential  of  its  people. 

Next  to  wool,  leather  was  the  most  essential  of 
the  raw  materials  required  for  the  equipment  of  our 
soldiers,  the  Quartermaster  Corps  purchasing  33,000,000 
pairs  of  shoes,  6,500,000  pairs  of  gloves,  and  nearly 
3,000,000  leather  jerkins,  in  addition  to  enormous 
quantities  of  harness,  saddlery,  and  other  equipment. 
It  was  early  recognized,  therefore,  that  it  was  as  vitally 
necessary  to  save  every  foot  of  leather  as  it  was  to 
conserve  every  pound  of  wool,  so,  in  pursuance  of  this 
policy,  the  Hide  and  Leather  Control  Board  was  formed. 
This  board  not  only  put  a  check  on  the  use  of  leather 
for  non-military  purposes  by  restricting  the  variety 
of  styles  in  civilian  shoes  and  by  similar  measures, 
but  it  guaranteed  an  adequate  supply  of  leather  to 
those  manufacturers  engaged  on  army  contracts.  It 
also  maintained  a  small  army  of  inspectors  to  examine 


178      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

the  leather  at  the  tanneries  as  well  as  the  finished  prod- 
ucts of  the  shoe,  clothing,  and  harness  factories,  there- 
by guaranteeing  the  quality  of  the  material  and  fre- 
quently improving  it.  Generally  speaking,  no  action 
was  taken  which  affected  the  hide  or  leather  business 
without  calling  into  consultation  the  members  of  the 
particular  trade  concerned  and  coming  to  an  agree- 
ment with  them  as  to  the  quality  and  price.  This 
procedure,  which  was  followed  throughout  the  war, 
did  much  to  eliminate  all  friction  and  misunderstand- 
ings, and  enormously  speeded  up  production. 

Hanging  always  over  the  heads  of  the  board  was 
the  menace  of  a  leather  shortage,  and  its  members  lay 
awake  nights  devising  plans  by  which  such  a  calamity 
could  be  averted.  To  illustrate  the  seriousness  of  the 
situation,  it  was  estimated  in  July,  1918,  that  in 
another  twelvemonth  something  like  13,000,000  hides 
would  be  required  for  the  use  of  the  army  alone.  As 
this  is  the  entire  output  of  hides  in  the  United  States. 
it  was  realized  that  were  the  war  to  continue  through 
the  winter,  there  would  be  no  leather  left  in  the  United 
States  by  spring.  Faced  by  this  critical  situation,  the 
board  called  to  its  aid  the  foremost  tanners,  shoe  and 
harness  manufacturers  in  the  country,  and  it  was  due 
to  their  services  in  checking  up  the  figures  submitted 
by  the  trade,  in  keeping  down  the  manufacture  of  non- 
essential articles,  in  unearthing  thitherto  unsuspected 
sources  of  leather  supply,  and  in  introducing  more 
economical  methods  of  cutting,  that  during  the  latter 
months  of  the  war  the  army  rarely  lacked  for  leather 
equipment.    I  have  already  told  how  great  economies 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  179 

in  the  consumption  of  leather  were  effected  by  the 
substitution  of  cotton  webbing  in  the  manufacture 
of  certain  articles.  During  the  second  spring  of  the 
war  the  women  of  America  suddenly  found  that  they 
were  no  longer  able  to  obtain  the  extremely  high- 
topped  boots  which  were  then  the  fashion,  while  men 
had  to  content  themselves  with  plain  instead  of 
"wing"  tipped  shoes.  The  leather  thus  saved  was 
used  in  the  manufacture  of  footwear,  gloves,  and  jer- 
kins for  the  men  who  were  offering  their  lives  in  the 
trenches  in  order  that  the  people  at  home  who  wore 
the  high-topped  boots  and  the  wing-tipped  shoes 
might  continue  to  live  in  safety.  Many  persons  have 
wondered  why  officers  serving  in  the  United  States 
were  not  authorized  to  wear  the  Sam  Browne  belt.  I 
can  give  them  one  of  the  reasons.  It  was  because  the 
necessary  leather  could  not  be  spared  for  a  purpose 
which  was,  after  all,  purely  ornamental.  As  a  result 
of  this  admirable  system  of  supervision  and  control 
the  Quartermaster  Corps  was  not  only  able  to  fill  with 
reasonable  promptness  the  requirements  of  our  troops 
overseas,  but  when  the  Armistice  was  signed,  it  had 
enough  leather  equipment,  either  manufactured  or  in 
process  of  manufacture,  to  supply  an  army  of  5,000,- 
000  men. 

In  none  of  its  innumerable  forms  of  endeavor  did 
the  Quartermaster  Corps  more  strikingly  demonstrate 
its  genius  as  a  manufacturer  than  in  the  design  and 
production  of  the  army  shoe.  Before  the  war  our  sol- 
diers wore  a  machine-sewed  shoe  of  russet  caK  lined 
with  duck,  very  similar  to  civilian  footwear  of  the  bet- 


iSo      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

ter  grade.  Shortly  after  the  beginning  of  hostilities, 
however,  the  War  Department  adopted  a  new  and 
much  stouter  shoe.  This  new  model  had  a  much 
heavier  upper  than  the  old  one,  with  the  flesh  or  rough 
side  out  and  the  grain  side  in,  and  with  no  lining,  while, 
instead  of  a  single  sole,  as  in  the  old  shoe,  two  heavy 
soles  were  used,  the  bottoms  of  which  were  thickly 
studded  with  hobnails.  But  even  these,  formidable  in 
appearance  as  they  were,  did  not  prove  stout  enough 
to  stand  up  under  the  incredible  wear  of  trench  war- 
fare, so  there  was  finally  developed  the  so-called 
''Pershing  shoe."  These  really  should  have  been  clas- 
sified as  tanks  instead  of  shoes,  for  they  could  go  any- 
where, they  could  withstand  any  amount  of  use  or 
abuse,  and  they  were,  literally  speaking,  armored. 
The  "Pershing  shoe"  has  three  outer  soles  which  are 
fastened  to  an  inner  sole  of  outer-sole  quality  and 
thickness,  first  by  nailing,  then  by  screws,  and  finally 
by  stitching  with  heavy  linen  thread;  the  toe  is  re- 
inforced with  a  moulded  steel  plate ;  both  sole  and  heel 
bristle  with  hobnails,  and,  as  a  final  touch,  the  heel 
has  a  heavy  steel  horseshoe  around  its  edge.  It  was 
by  long  odds  the  best  shoe  worn  by  any  army.  In 
fact,  no  such  footwear  was  ever  produced  before.  The 
pity  was  that  it  did  not  reach  our  troops  sooner. 

Before  we  had  been  at  war  a  month  a  most  trouble- 
some fact  came  to  light  in  connection  with  the  ques- 
tion of  shoes.  It  was  found  that  the  old  schedule  of 
sizes  was  entirely  wrong  and  did  not  begin  to  meet  the 
new  conditions.  In  the  old  army  the  individual  men 
were  carefully  selected  according  to  a  certain  standard 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  i8i 

of  measurement,  and  it  was,  therefore,  a  simple  matter 
to  fit  them  with  shoes  from  a  comparatively  restricted 
range  of  sizes.  But  the  millions  of  men  who  were 
called  to  the  colors  by  the  draft  represented  all  types 
except  the  physically  defective.  In  the  ranks  of  the 
recruits  a  250-pound  policeman  who  had  spent  the 
better  part  of  his  life  on  his  feet  would  be  found  shoul- 
der to  shoulder  with  an  anaemic-looking  little  clerk  who 
had  spent  most  of  his  life  perched  on  an  ofifice-stool. 
A  man  whose  feet  had  always  been  incased  in  the 
flexible  pumps  of  a  professional  dancer  might  find 
himself  rubbing  elbows  with  a  cow-puncher  who  wore 
high-heeled  Mexican  boots  and  who  had  always  lived 
in  the  saddle.  As  the  raw  levies  began  to  round  into 
shape  at  the  training-camps,  it  was  found  that  clerks, 
professional  men,  and  others  who  had  not  been  accus- 
tomed to  working  in  the  open  air  developed  in  size 
with  amazing  rapidity.  This  was  particularly  true 
of  the  men's  feet,  for  after  a  fe^v  long  hikes  with  a 
full  pack,  a  recruit  could  not  squeeze  his  feet  into  shoes 
of  a  size  which  he  had  theretofore  worn  with  perfect 
comfort.  This  meant  that  an  entire  new  series  of 
models  and  lasts  had  to  be  made,  running  up  to  un- 
heard-of sizes,  as,  for  example,  1 7-EEE !  The  stand- 
ard sizes  of  the  army  shoe  at  present  range  in  length 
from  5  to  15  and  in  width  from  A  to  EE,  thus  making 
it  necessary  to  carry  each  style  of  shoe  in  one  hundred 
and  twenty  sizes. 

Now,  no  article  of  clothing  can  cause  such  acute 
discomfort  and  so  quickly  afifect  a  man's  disposition, 
and   consequently  his  morale,   as  an   ill-fitting  shoe. 


i82      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

The  Germans  were  the  first  to  appreciate  the  impor- 
tance to  an  army  of  caring  for  the  men's  feet,  and  with 
their  customary  thoroughness  took  steps  to  prevent 
foot-trouble  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  war.  I 
remember  remarking,  when  I  was  with  the  Ninth  Ger- 
man Army  during  the  first  weeks  of  the  invasion  in 
1914,  that  following  each  regiment  of  infantry  was  a 
huge  motor-truck  carrying  a  complete  pedicure  estab- 
lishment— a  sort  of  chiropodist's  office  on  wheels. 
Whenever  a  soldier  developed  a  bunion  or  a  corn  or  an 
ingrown  nail,  whenever  his  boots  pinched  his  toes  or 
chafed  his  heel,  he  fell  out  of  the  ranks  and  waited  for 
the  pedicure  wagon — I  don't  remember  the  German 
name  for  it — to  come  along,  climbed  up,  sat  in  a  chair, 
and  the  attending  chiropodist  tended  his  feet  and,  if 
necessary,  issued  him  another  pair  of  boots.  "The 
feet  of  the  soldiers?"  said  a  German  general  to  whom 
I  mentioned  the  matter.  "They  no  longer  belong 
to  them  after  the  Empire  goes  to  war — they  belong 
to  the  Emperor.  A  soldier  is  no  more  permitted  to 
abuse  his  feet  than  he  is  to  abuse  his  rifle.  They  must 
always  be  in  condition  for  marching  and  for  fighting 
the  Emperor's  battles." 

Profiting  by  the  example  of  our  enemy,  we  exer- 
cised the  utmost  care  in  fitting  our  men  with  footwear. 
As  the  result  of  examinations  conducted  at  a  number 
of  training-camps,  it  was  found  that  out  of  nearly 
60,000  men  examined,  slightly  more  than  71  per  cent 
were  wearing  shoes  which  were  too  long  and  nearly  10 
per  cent  shoes  which  were  too  short,  only  one  man  in 
five  having  shoes  of  the  proper  size.     These  figures 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  183 

were  sufficient  to  demonstrate  to  the  War  Department 
the  necessity  for  extraordinary  care  in  the  fitting  of 
soldiers'  shoes,  and  led  to  the  establishment  at  Camp 
Meigs,  D.  C,  and  Jefferson  Barracks,  Mo.,  of  schools 
for  foot-measuring  and  shoe-fitting.  Two  officers  from 
every  camp  and  cantonment  in  the  United  States  were 
detailed  to  take  this  course  of  instruction,  which  lasted 
five  days  and  consisted  of  lectures,  demonstrations  of 
the  various  appliances,  and  practical  training,  the  lat- 
ter being  acquired  by  each  officer  actually  measuring 
and  fitting  a  thousand  men  with  army  shoes  under  the 
direction  of  competent  instructors. 

The  coal  which  was  required  for  heating  and  cook- 
ing in  the  various  camps  and  cantonments  both  in  the 
United  States  and  France,  the  coke  which  was  used  at 
our  arsenals  in  the  production  of  ordnance,  the  gaso- 
line which  drove  our  trucks,  tractors,  tanks,  and  air- 
planes, and  the  oils  which  lubricated  them,  were  all 
procured  through  the  Fuel  Branch  of  the  Fuel  and 
Forage  Division  of  the  Office  of  the  Quartermaster- 
General,  which  in  October,  191 8,  was  converted  into 
the  Raw  Materials  Division  of  the  Office  of  the  Director 
of  Purchase  and  Storage,  without,  however,  in  any 
way  affecting  its  functions.  From  its  creation  by  the 
President  in  August,  191 7,  until  the  close  of  the  war, 
the  United  States  Fuel  Administration  worked  in  clos- 
est harmony  with  the  Fuel  Branch  of  the  Quartermaster 
Department  in  supplying  the  enormous  fuel  require- 
ments of  our  fighting  forces.  The  procedure  was 
roughly  as  follows :    The  Fuel  Branch  first  ascertained 


i84      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

the  probable  requirements  of  every  camp,  post,  and 
station  for  each  month  of  the  fiscal  year,  and  upon 
receipt  of  these  estimates  it  would  request  the  Fuel 
Administration  to  allocate  to  the  respective  camps  the 
tonnages  required.  Pursuant  to  these  requests,  the 
Fuel  Administration  would  instruct  its  District  Repre- 
sentatives to  place  the  necessary  orders  with  the  vari- 
ous coal-shippers,  the  regulation  of  shipments  and 
similar  matters  thenceforth  being  handled  by  the  Dis- 
trict Representatives  directly  with  the  Camp  Quarter- 
masters. With  the  abolition  of  the  Fuel  Adminis- 
tration at  the  end  of  the  war,  the  task  of  supplying 
the  army  with  coal  and  coke  devolved  upon  the  officers 
in  charge  of  the  various  General  Supply  Zones  into 
which  the  United  States  is  now  divided. 

The  prime  importance  to  the  army  of  gasoline 
and  lubricants  was  made  clear  by  General  Pershing 
when  he  placed  them,  with  food  and  forage,  in  the 
first  division  of  the  automatic  supply  cable  which  gov- 
erned and  controlled  the  movement  of  all  supplies 
that  had  to  go  forward  daily  to  the  combat  troops  on 
the  line.  To  procure  and  maintain  an  adequate  supply 
of  petroleum  products,  and  to  devise  and  standardize 
these  products,  there  was  created  the  Oil  Branch  of 
the  Fuel  and  Forage  Division  of  the  Quartermaster 
Corps.  Many  interesting  problems  were  successfully 
solved  by  the  Oil  Branch,  which  received  assistance 
of  the  greatest  value  from  the  producers  and  refiners. 
Though  the  oil  producing  and  refining  concerns  of  the 
United  States  have  repeatedly  been  characterized  by 
politicians  and  by  the  press  as  "soulless  corporations," 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  185 

their  patriotfem  throughout  tlie  great  emergency  was 
shown  by  the  fact  that  their  interest  and  efforts  did 
not  end  with  providing  what  the  government  asked 
for,  but  every  one  connected  with  them,  from  their 
presidents  down,  regarded  the  matter  of  supplying 
the  army  as  a  personal  responsibility,  suggesting  many 
valuable  changes,  improvements,  and  economies  based 
on  their  technical  knowledge  and  experience. 

For  the  benefit  of  those  unfamiliar  with  the  oil 
industry,  I  ought  to  explain  that  there  are  many  grades 
of  gasoline,  differing  in  character  or  in  method  of  pro- 
duction. Commercial  gasoHne,  for  automobile  use, 
included  grades  known  as  "straight-run,"  "casing- 
head,"  "blended,"  "pressure  still,"  and  "cracked." 
In  order  to  standardize  gasoline  for  army  use  the  Fuel 
and  Forage  Division  worked  out,  with  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  refiners,  certain  specifications,  with  the 
result  that  a  gasoline  called  "Quartermaster  Specifica- 
tion" was  adopted  as  a  standard  fuel.  It  is  known  as 
"428°  gasoline,"  and  is  used  for  motor  cars,  trucks, 
tanks,  and  cycles.  For  aviation  purposes  three  other 
grades  were  produced;  two  of  which,  257°  "Fighting 
Naphtha  "  and  302°  "  Export  Aviation,"  were  furnished 
only  to  the  American  Ex-peditionary  Forces.  "Fight- 
ing Naphtha"  is  the  highest  refinement  of  gasoline  ever 
produced  in  quantity,  being  produced  by  "rerunning" 
Export  Aviation  and  taking  off  the  "cream"  of  that 
extremely  high-grade  fuel.  To  distinguish  it  as  the 
finest  motor-fuel  in  existence  and  to  prevent  its  indis- 
criminate use,  a  small  amount  of  aniline  dye  was  added 
to  color  it  red.    Its  use  was  confined  to  scout  and  battle 


i86      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   AR:\IY 

planes,  thus  giving  our  flying-fighters  an  immense 
superiority  over  those  of  our  alhes  or  of  the  enemy, 
and  thereby  lending  them  the  confidence  which  is 
required  for  daring  deeds.  Indeed,  man\'  a  Hun  flier 
was  brought  to  earth,  many  a  D.  S.  C.  was  won,  as 
much  by  the  quahties  of  the  scarlet  fuel  as  by  the 
courage  of  the  a\'iator.  WTio  says  that  there  is  no 
romance  in  gasoline  ? 

Though  this  is  the  greatest  horse-breeding  nation 
in  the  world,  and  though  Americans  fondly  think  of 
themselves  as  a  nation  of  horsemen,  no  one  of  the  war- 
ring countries  found  itself  so  utterly  unprepared  in 
respect  to  remounts  as  the  United  States.  The  im- 
portance with  which  the  War  Department  had  re- 
garded the  question  is  best  illustrated  by  the  fact  that 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  remount  matters  were  in 
charge  of  one  officer,  with  two  civilian  clerks,  as  a 
subsection  of  the  Transportation  Branch  of  the  Quar- 
termaster-General's Office.  For  a  number  of  years 
prior  to  the  war  repeated  efforts  had  been  made  by 
enthusiastic  horsemen,  both  in  the  army  and  out  of 
it,  to  induce  the  government  to  undertake  the  breed- 
ing of  cavalry  and  artiller}'  mounts  on  a  large  scale, 
or  at  least  to  encourage  their  breeding  by  farmers,  as 
has  been  done  for  centuries  by  certain  of  the  European 
nations.  But  the  parsimony  of  Congress,  combined 
with  the  lack  of  vision  of  officers  high  in  the  military 
councils  of  the  nation,  blocked  all  these  plans,  and 
though  one  or  two  government  studs  were  estabhshed 
with   animals  presented   by  public-spirited   breeders, 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  187 

so  little  of  real  value  was  accomplished  that  of  the 
458,000  animals  purchased  during  the  war  by  the  Re- 
mount Service,  only  about  5,000  were  horses  bred 
specially  for  military  purposes. 

Upon  the  outbreak  of  the  war  it  became  neces- 
sary, therefore,  to  scour  the  country  for  suitable  ani- 
mals, which  had,  perforce,  to  be  purchased  in  the  open 
market,  which  had  already  been  gone  over  with  a  fine- 
tooth  comb  by  British,  French,  Italians,  and  Russians, 
all  of  whom  had  maintained  remount  commissions  in 
this  country  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  conflict. 
Fortunately  for  us,  under  the  circumstances,  the  re- 
quirements of  the  Expeditionary  Forces  were  confined 
to  officers'  mounts,  artillery  horses  and  mules,  only 
one  regiment  of  cavalry,  in  addition  to  the  headquarters 
troops  of  the  various  divisions,  being  sent  overseas. 
There  were,  however,  demands  for  large  numbers  of 
horses  for  the  use  of  the  two  cavalry  divisions  which 
were  in  process  of  organization  in  this  country,  and 
for  the  cavalry  regiments  which  were  kept  on  patrol 
duty  along  the  Mexican  border. 

As  soon  as  it  became  apparent  that  it  would  be 
necessary  for  the  government  to  make  large  purchases 
of  horses  and  mules,  hundreds  of  horse-breeders,  racing 
and  hunting  men  and  polo-players  offered  their  services 
as  purchasing  agents.  Some  fifty  of  these  gentlemen, 
as  shrewd  judges  of  horse-flesh  as  the  Blue  Grass  region 
of  Kentucky,  the  hunting-fields  of  Long  Island  and 
Virginia,  and  the  show-rings  and  race-courses  of  the 
great  cities  could  produce,  were  given  commissions 
as  captains  in  the  Quartermaster  Corps,  and  were  sent 


i88      THE  ARMY   BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

to  the  headquarters  of  the  various  purchasing  zones 
for  a  short  period  of  practical  instruction  in  the  type 
of  horse  required  by  the  army,  and  in  army  methods 
generally,  before  being  sent  on  the  road  to  purchase 
animals.  How  efficiently  and  conscientiously  these 
officers,  unaccustomed  to  military  methods,  performed 
their  duties  is  shown  by  the  exceptionally  high  class 
of  animals  which  they  purchased  and  shipped  to  the 
various  auxiliary  remount  depots,  where  they  were 
trained  and  conditioned  for  army  use.  As  the  dearth 
of  tonnage  placed  a  limit  on  the  number  of  animals 
which  could  be  shipped  overseas,  a  number  of  remount 
officers  were  sent  to  Europe,  where  large  purchases  of 
live  stock  were  made,  about  110,000  horses  and  10,000 
mules  being  bought  from  the  French,  some  12,000 
horses  and  6,000  mules  from  the  British,  and  upward 
of  12,000  mules — the  big,  i6-hand  Andalusians — in 
Spain. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  there  were  only  three 
remount  depots  in  the  United  States — at  Front  Royal, 
Virginia,  Fort  Keogh,  Montana,  and  Fort  Reno,  Okla- 
homa— together  with  auxiliary  depots  at  Fort  Bliss 
and  Fort  Sam  Houston  in  Texas,  but  with  the  rapid 
expansion  of  the  forces  it  was  found  necessary  to  estab- 
lish an  auxiliary  remount  depot  adjacent  to  each  of 
the  thirty-three  camps  and  cantonments  of  the  Na- 
tional Guard  and  the  National  Army.  This  naturally 
necessitated  an  enormous  increase  in  the  Remount 
Service  personnel,  which  shortly  before  the  Armistice 
numbered  400  officers  and  19,000  enlisted  men.  As 
the  war  progressed  it  became  increasingly  difficult  for 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  189 

the  Remount  Service  to  meet  the  demands  made  by 
the  auxiliary  depots  for  officers,  for  the  available  supply 
of  amateur  horsemen  who  had  volunteered  their  ser- 
vices quickly  became  exhausted,  many  of  them  going 
into  other  branches  of  the  army.  In  order  to  meet 
this  demand  camps  were  organized  at  Camp  Joseph 
E.  Johnston,  near  Jacksonville,  Florida,  and  at  Camp 
Shelby,  Hattiesburg,  Mississippi,  where  enlisted  men 
who  possessed  the  necessary  qualifications  were  trained 
for  commissions  as  officers.  There  was  also  established 
at  Camp  Johnston  a  mobilization  camp  for  the  or- 
ganization and  training  of  Field  Remount  Depots,  but 
as  this  organization  did  not  prove  sufficiently  flexible, 
there  was  authorized  a  smaller  unit,  known  as  a  Field 
Remount  Squadron,  consisting  of  6  officers  and  157 
enlisted  men,  it  being  estimated  that  one  squadron 
would  be  required  for  every  replacement  of  400  ani- 
mals. And  replacements  were,  of  necessity,  frequent, 
it  having  been  estimated  that  the  average  life  of  a 
horse  in  France  was  only  sixteen  days.  There  were 
organized  at  Camp  Johnston  a  total  of  sixty-three 
Field  Remount  Squadrons,  three  wagon  companies, 
and  twelve  pack-trains,  of  which  all  but  seventeen 
squadrons  saw  service  abroad.  The  enhsted  personnel 
of  these  squadrons  consisted  of  drafted  men  who  were 
carefully  selected  because  of  their  knowledge  of  horses, 
most  of  them  having  been  farmers,  ranchmen,  cow- 
punchers,  and,  in  a  few  cases,  jockeys.  Provision  was 
also  made  for  training  the  enlisted  specialists  attached 
to  each  squadron,  schools  being  established  for  horse- 
shoers,    saddlers,    farriers,    teamsters,    and    squadron 


I90      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

clerks.  Indeed,  there  was  no  more  interesting  sight 
at  a  cantonment  than  the  Remount  Depot,  where 
bronco-busters,  fresh  from  the  ranges,  could  be  seen 
breaking  unruly  horses  in  the  "bull-pens,"  while  veteran 
packers  and  plainsmen  gave  instruction  to  classes  of 
raw  recruits  in  the  art  of  harnessing  and  driving  a  six- 
horse  "swing"  or  of  throwing  the  "diamond  hitch." 

The  chief  function  of  the  Quartermaster  Corps 
might  be  described,  I  suppose,  as  spending.  It  was, 
in  fact,  barring  the  Ordnance  Department,  the  greatest 
spending  agency  in  America,  if  not  in  the  world,  during 
the  war.  Not  many  persons  are  aware,  however,  I 
imagine,  that  it  has  a  division  whose  sole  purpose  is 
saving.  I  refer  to  the  Salvage  Division.  This  was 
the  only  organization  in  the  army  which  turned  waste 
into  profit.  It  was  a  ragpicker,  a  garbage-collector,  a 
junk-dealer,  and  an  ole-clothes  man  combined.  While 
certain  departments  of  the  government  seized  on  the 
great  emergency  to  spend  money  like  a  drunken  sailor, 
as  the  politicians  put  it,  the  Salvage  Service  was  as 
systematic  a  saver  as  the  late  Russell  Sage.  And,  like 
that  famous  financier,  it  was  able  to  show  something 
for  its  savings — to  be  exact,  something  over  $ioo,- 
000,000.  It  had  a  perfect  passion  for  economy.  It 
saved  everything,  from  the  pieces  clipped  from  a  sol- 
dier's overcoat  when  it  was  shortened  to  the  food 
which  he  left  on  his  plate.  Nothing  was  too  large  or 
too  small  to  escape  it.  Indeed,  the  members  of  the 
Salvage  Service  should  have  adopted  for  their  shoulder- 
badge  a  design  showing  an  ever-open  eye.    If  a  loco- 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  191 

motive  was  utterly  demolished  in  a  railway  wreck 
the  men  of  the  Salvage  Service  appeared  on  the  scene 
almost  before  the  wheels  had  stopped  turning  and 
collected  the  splintered  remnants.  If  a  soldier  tossed 
a  pair  of  worn-out  socks  into  the  garbage-barrel,  the 
Salvage  Service  fished  them  out  and  used  them  for 
something  or  other.  In  France  it  saved  and  sorted 
the  milHons  of  sand-bags  which  lined  the  parapets  of 
the  trenches;  it  untangled  and  rerolled  for  future 
use  the  millions  of  feet  of  twisted,  rusted  barbed  wire 
which  formed  the  entanglements  in  front  of  the 
trenches;  it  gathered  and  sorted  and  sent  back  for 
reloading  the  empty  shells  from  the  field-guns;  it 
fumigated  and  cleaned  and  pressed  the  soldiers'  uni- 
forms; it  washed  their  shirts  and  socks  and  underwear; 
it  mended  their  shoes;  it  transformed  their  obsolete 
campaign  hats  into  felt  slippers,  and  both  in  this 
country  and  abroad  it  collected  the  waste  from  the 
mess-tables  as  well  as  introducing  various  methods  of 
food-saving;  it  operated  hundreds  of  camp  and  mobile 
laundries,  where  for  a  dollar  a  month  a  soldier  could 
have  washed  all  the  clothing  he  wished;  it  ran  farms 
and  truck-gardens  at  the  camps  and  cantonments  in 
order  to  supply  the  troops  with  fresh  vegetables;  it 
maintained  printing-shops,  wagon-repair  shops,  car- 
pentry-shops, and  paint-shops,  and  just  as  the  Treasury'' 
Department  appealed  to  the  country'  to  "Buy!  Buy! 
Buy!"  so  the  Salvage  Service,  by  means  of  posters 
and  placards,  appealed  to  the  army  to  "Save!  Save! 
Save!" 

In   the  happy,   careless,  easy-going  days  before 


192      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

the  war,  the  question  of  repairing  the  worn  shoes  and 
clothing  of  the  soldiers  was  not  considered  of  sufficient 
importance  to  merit  even  passing  attention  from  the 
War  Department.  The  army  was  small,  material 
was  plentiful,  and  the  clothing  belonged  to  the  soldier. 
The  government  issued  a  man  a  uniform  and  out  of 
his  pay  required  him  to  keep  it  clean  and  in  repair; 
if  his  clothing  did  not  present  a  neat  appearance,  he 
received  a  reprimand  or  a  court  martial.  When  his 
shoes  wore  out  he  had  to  have  them  mended  at  his 
own  expense — all  out  of  the  munificent  salary  of  fifteen 
dollars  a  month !  But  under  the  new  system,  intro- 
duced at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  the  soldier's  cloth- 
ing is  the  property  of  the  government,  and  the  govern- 
ment undertakes  to  keep  it  clean  and  in  repair.  And 
that  is  where  the  work  of  the  Salvage  Service  comes 
in. 

Within  five  months  after  its  entry  into  the  war  the 
United  States,  profiting  by  the  experience  of  the  Allies, 
took  steps  toward  the  organization  of  a  branch  of  the 
army  which  would  devote  itself  to  the  conservation 
and  reclamation  of  articles  and  materials  which  would 
otherwise  be  wasted.  Pursuant  to  this  policy  there 
was  established  in  October,  191 7,  the  Conservation 
Branch  of  the  Supplies  Division  of  the  Quartermaster- 
General's  Office  with  a  personnel  of  two  officers  and  a 
stenographer.  Within  less  than  a  year  this  little 
nucleus  had  expanded  into  the  huge  Salvage  Division 
of  the  Office  of  the  Director  of  Purchase  and  Storage, 
with  500  officers,  20,000  enlisted  men,  and  2,000  civilian 
employees.     The  work  of  this  division  has  consisted, 


AMERICAN'  SALXAGE  DUMP  IN   FRANCE. 
"The  salvage  service  had  a  perfect  passion  for  economy." 


Photograph  by  Signal  Corp^.  V.  S.  .1. 

A  WORKROOM  IN  AN  AMERICAN  SALVAGE  DEPOT  IN  TRANCE. 

The  salvage  service  fumigated,  cleaned,  pressed  the  soldiers'  uniforms.  washe<l  their  shirts,  socks,  and 
underwear.     It  mended  shoes  and  transformed  campaign  hats  into  felt  sHppers. 


AN  AMERICAN  DELOUSING  STATION. 

The  weary  men  returning  from  the  trenches  found  the  delousing  and  fumigating  stations  set  up  and 

awaiting  them. 


AN  AMERICAN  LAUNDRY  IN  OPERATION  NEAR  THE  FRONT. 
Each  of  these  units  can  wash  the  clothing  of  10,000  men,  fresh  from  the  trenches,  weekly. 


THE   "Q.  M.  C."  193 

generally  speaking,  in  cleaning,  laundering,  repairing, 
renovating,  and  otherwise  looking  after  the  uniform  and 
equipment  of  the  American  soldier,  and  in  those  cases 
where  the  uniform  or  equipment  was  too  badly  dam- 
aged to  be  worth  repairing,  the  service  has  devised 
means  of  using  the  sound  material  for  other  purposes. 
During  the  six  months  beginning  April  i,  19 18,  the 
service  salvaged  nearly  9,250,000  articles  of  clothing 
and  equipment.  The  value  of  these  articles  when  new 
was  something  over  $41,000,000.  After  their  repair  it 
is  estimated  that  their  value  was  in  the  neighborhood 
of  $29,000,000.  The  total  cost  of  repair  was  a  little 
more  than  $2,500,000,  leaving  a  net  saving  due  to  this 
salvage  operation  of  about  $23,500,000.  Quite  a  tidy 
sum.  During  four  months  of  1918  the  Salvage  Service 
collected  approximately  43,000,000  pounds  of  junk, 
including  old  metals,  iron,  rubber,  cotton  and  wool- 
len rags,  rope,  paper,  leather,  and  horsehair.  About 
3,000,000  pounds  of  this  material,  having  an  estimated 
value  of  $769,000,  was  reissued  for  army  use,  while 
19,000,000  pounds  was  sold  for  $508,000,  leaving 
23,000,000  pounds  still  to  be  disposed  of.  Had  it  not 
been  for  the  Salvage  Service,  practically  all  this  would 
have  gone  to  waste.  In  addition  this  division  collected 
a  great  quantity  of  lumber,  mostly  odds  and  ends,  of 
which  $25,000  worth  was  reissued  for  army  use  and 
$475,000  worth  was  sold,  leaving  approximately  1,750,- 
000  board  feet  on  hand.  From  ^lay  to  November, 
1918,  the  Salvage  Division  collected  and  sold  $300,000 
Avorth  of  garbage,  and  nearly  $200,000  worth  of  manure 
and  condemned  hay  and  straw,  to  say  nothing  of  dead 


194      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

animals  to  the  value  of  $5,000,  thus  netting  upward 
of  $500,000  from  the  swill-pail,  the  manure-pile,  and 
the  bone-yard  alone !  The  American  soldier  likes  to 
sit  down  to  his  meals  with  a  heaping  plate  before  him, 
and  as  he  rarely  eats  everything  on  his  plate,  an  enor- 
mous amount  of  perfectly  good  material  finds  its  way 
to  the  garbage-barrel.  It  is  estimated  that  prior  to 
July,  1 918,  every  man  in  the  camps  in  the  United 
States  wasted  approximately  two  pounds  of  food  per 
day  in  this  fashion.  Then  the  machinery  of  the  Sal- 
vage Service  was  set  in  operation,  it  being  estimated 
that  in  five  months,  on  the  basis  of  1,000,000  men,  it 
saved  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  billion  pounds  of  foodstuffs. 

Another  activity  of  the  Salvage  Corps  was  the 
operation  of  hundreds  of  camp  and  mobile  laundries. 
When  war  was  declared  the  government  owned  four- 
teen small  steam-laundries  which  provided  for  the 
needs  of  the  few  hundred  men  stationed  at  the  posts 
where  they  were  located.  But  with  the  declaration  of 
war  and  the  concentration  of  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  men  in  the  various  cantonments,  the  laundry  ques- 
tion assumed  such  serious  proportions  that  nineteen 
cantonment  laundries  were  hastily  erected  and  placed 
in  operation.  The  urgent  need  for  these  laundries  is 
illustrated  by  the  fact  that  on  September  i,  19 18, 
nearly  6,000,000  pieces  of  clothing  were  awaiting  laun- 
dering.    Quite  a  wash-basket,  wasn't  it  ? 

The  Mobile  Laundry  Unit  was  one  of  the  novelties 
introduced  by  the  Great  War.  Instead  of  the  soldiers 
being  compelled  to  take  their  soiled  clothing  to  the 
laundry,  the  laundry  came  to  them.     No  matter  how 


THE  "Q.  M.  C."  195 

remote  the  town  in  which  their  rest  billets  might  be 
located,  no  matter  how  exposed  it  might  be  to  the  fire 
of  the  enemy's  long-range  guns,  the  weary  men,  return- 
ing from  the  trenches,  found  the  mobile  laundry  set 
up  and  awaiting  them.  Each  unit  consists  of  a  large 
steam-tractor  and  four  trailers.  When  erected  for  op- 
eration the  trailers  form  a  room  thirty  feet  long  and 
twenty-eight  feet  wide,  with  power  provided  from  out- 
side by  the  tractor.  The  trailers  contain  two  large 
washing-machines,  two  extractors,  a  drying  tumbler, 
hot  and  cold  water  tanks,  a  pump  to  lift  water  from 
wells  and  streams,  a  soap-tank,  and  a  dynamo  for  elec- 
tric lighting.  Each  of  these  units,  by  operating  twenty- 
four  hours  a  day,  can  wash  the  clothing  of  ten  thou- 
sand men,  fresh  from  the  trenches,  weekly.  So  rapidly 
and  systematically  was  the  work  done  that  when  the 
men  left  the  "wash-up"  and  "debusing"  stations, 
after  having  rid  themselves  of  the  filth  and  vermin 
acquired  at  the  front,  they  found  clean  clothing  await- 
ing them.  And  clean  clothing — and  this  I  say  from 
experience — means  more  to  the  soldier  than  anything 
save  a  bath  and  food. 

The  Salvage  Service  has  been  one  of  the  least 
advertised,  as  it  has  been  one  of  the  most  efficient, 
branches  of  the  army.  Probably  not  one  out  of  a 
thousand  readers  of  this  book  was  previously  aware  of 
its  existence.  Yet  during  the  twelve  months  of  19 18 
it  saved  to  the  government,  either  in  articles  repaired 
and  reissued  or  in  materials  saved  and  sold,  one  hundred 
and  one  millions  of  dollars.  (If  this  does  not  impress 
you,  let  me  remind  you  that  the  entire  appropriation 


196      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

for  the  support  of  the  army  for  1898 — the  year  of  the 
Spanish- American  War — was  only  a  Httle  over  $70,000,- 
000.)  It  has  developed  what  was  formerly  a  liability 
into  a  tremendous  asset.  It  has  conserved  untold 
quantities  of  raw  materials  at  a  time  when  those  mate- 
rials were  most  vitally  needed  and  were  most  difficult 
to  obtain.  By  again  and  again  repairing  and  using 
worn-out  clothing  and  equipment  and  thereby  per- 
mitting the  shipment  of  vital  necessities,  it  saved  thou- 
sands of  tons  of  shipping  at  a  time  when  every  ton 
counted. 

If,  in  this  impressionistic  sketch  of  the  activities 
of  the  Salvage  Service,  and  of  its  parent,  the  Quarter- 
master Corps,  I  seem  to  have  indulged  too  freely  in  the 
use  of  figures,  it  is  because  those  figures  are  of  vital 
concern  to  you.  They  represent  your  dollars,  Mr. 
Reader;  they  show  where  the  money  from  your  Liberty 
Bonds  has  gone. 


V 

ORDNANCE 

THE  history  of  mankind  is  punctuated  by  a  few 
examples  of  endeavor  which,  by  reason  of  their 
magnitude,  cannot  be  fully  comprehended  by  the 
human  mind.  That  phase  of  America's  part  in  the 
Great  War  comprised  in  the  work  of  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment of  the  Army  is  one  of  them.  It  has  been 
termed,  and  without  exaggeration,  the  greatest  effort, 
directed  by  a  single  head,  of  all  time.  It  was  incom- 
parably the  greatest  industrial  undertaking  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen.  Therein  lies  the  difficulty  of 
writing  an  adequate  story  of  ordnance — it  is  too  big, 
too  complex,  for  any  writer  entirely  to  grasp,  for  any 
reader  completely  to  comprehend.  It  is  like  attempt- 
ing to  describe  the  grandeur  of  the  Grand  Canyon; 
so  stupendous  a  thing  can  neither  be  translated  into 
words  nor  encompassed  by  the  mind.  The  best  that 
I  can  hope  to  do  is  to  sketch  a  few  of  the  most  salient 
features  of  the  great  story  in  barest  outline. 

First  of  all,  I  would  wish  to  convey  to  you  some 
conception  of  the  vastness  of  the  organization  com- 
monly referred  to  as  Army  Ordnance,  the  immensity 
of  the  sums  which  it  expended,  and  the  enormous 
quantities  in  which  it  dealt.  It  has  been  said  that  a 
billion  is  too  huge  a  figure  for  any  one  to  comprehend. 
Scarcely  a  billion  minutes  have  elapsed  since  the  birth 
of  Christ.  Yet  the  estimated  cost  of  the  ordnance 
required  to  supply  our  first  5,000,000  men  was  nearly 

197 


198      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

thirteen  billions  of  dollars.  But  that  is,  after  all,  merely 
an  endless  caravan  of  ciphers.  Here  is  another  way 
of  expressing  it.  Between  the  signing  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  and  the  declaration  of  war  against 
Germany,  the  sixty-four  successive  congresses  of  the 
United  States  appropriated  but  twenty-six  billion 
dollars  for  every  purpose  of  government,  including  the 
cost  of  five  wars,  the  pensions  resulting  from  those 
wars,  the  upkeep  of  the  Army  and  Navy,  the  activi- 
ties of  the  State,  Interior,  Treasury,  Agriculture,  Com- 
merce, and  Post-Office  Departments,  the  control  of 
immigration,  the  administration  of  justice,  river  and 
harbor  improvements,  public  buildings  and  public 
works  of  every  description,  the  salary  of  every  gov- 
ernment employee  from  the  President  of  the  United 
States  to  the  keeper  of  an  obscure  lighthouse  in  the 
Philippines,  these  countless  items  representing  in  the 
aggregate  the  total  expenditures,  over  a  period  of  more 
than  seven-score  years,  of  the  richest  nation  in  the 
world.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that,  had  the  war  con- 
tinued for  another  five  months,  a  single  branch  of  the 
army  would  have  expended  approximately  one-half  as 
much  as  the  nation  expended  from  its  foundation  to 
the  date  on  which  it  entered  the  great  conflict.  Com- 
bine the  wealth  of  all  of  America's  millionaries,  add 
the  value  of  all  of  America's  railways,  throw  in  the 
Standard  Oil,  the  Western  Union,  the  Ford  Motor 
Company,  and  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation 
for  good  measure,  and  you  will  still  fall  far  short  of 
the  staggering  total  which  the  United  States  had 
planned  to  invest  in  ordnance.    Or,  if  these  compari- 


ORDNANCE  199 

sons  are  not  sufficiently  graphic,  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment would  have  spent  enough  in  the  first  two  years 
of  war  to  have  built  twenty-four  Panama  Canals,  to 
have  purchased  the  entire  city  of  New  York,  at  its  as- 
sessed valuation,  twice  over,  or  to  have  built  36,000,- 
000  Ford  cars — one  for  every  third  person  in  the  United 
States.  That  is  the  best  that  I  can  do  to  give  you  a 
realization  of  the  immensity  of  the  task  assigned  to 
the  Ordnance  Department. 

Ordnance !  No  word  in  the  whole  lexicon  of  war 
held  so  much  significance  for  the  fighters  at  the  front 
— and  so  little  for  civilians  at  home.  For  ordnance  is 
the  bed-plate  of  the  whole  military  machine.  If  it 
breaks  or  gives  way  the  machine  instantly  stops  run- 
ning. An  army  can  fight  without  cavah*y,  without 
aircraft,  without  tanks,  without  machine-guns,  yes, 
even  without  artillery,  but  no  army  can  fight,  or  ever 
has  fought,  without  ordnance.  It  is  as  essential  to 
the  functioning  of  an  army  as  oil  is  to  the  burning  of 
a  lamp.  Behind  the  belching  soixante-qiiinze,  behind 
the  crackling  musketry,  behind  the  lumbering,  ele- 
phantine tanks,  behind  the  escadrilles  of  airplanes,  was 
the  huge  organization,  its  head  on  the  Potomac  and 
its  tentacles  reaching  westward  to  the  Pacific  and  east- 
ward to  the  Rhine,  which  provided  the  fighting-men 
with  weapons  and  kept  the  voracious  maws  of  those 
weapons  supplied  with  their  steel  food.  The  combat 
troops  up  on  the  line  knew  that  should  the  great 
Ordance  machine  break  down,  even  for  an  hour,  they 
would  be  compelled  to  retreat  or  surrender.  The  gen- 
erals knew  it.    The  statesmen  and  politicians  in  Paris 


200      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

knew  it,  too.  And  the  Germans  knew  it  best  of  all, 
as  is  testified  to  by  the  labor  troubles  which  they  fo- 
mented and  the  Jfires  and  explosions  which  they  caused. 
You  didn't  know  that  the  work  of  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment was  so  important,  eh?  Yet,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  you  were  always  asking  why  the  Allies  didn't 
end  the  war  by  destroying  a  certain  German  ordnance 
estabhshment  called  Krupps. 

What  is  ordnance?  It  were  easier  to  tell  what  it 
is  not.  It  is  artillery  of  all  types  and  calibres,  with 
mounts,  carriages,  and  ammunition;  small  arms  of 
every  description;  every  kind  of  explosive  used  in  war- 
fare; an  endless  variety  of  gas-driven,  steam-driven, 
horse-drawn,  and  hand-drawn  transport;  all  harness 
and  horse  equipment,  save  that  used  by  the  Quarter- 
master Corps;  tools,  machinery,  and  material  for  mak- 
ing or  repairing  everj^thing  included  in  the  term — in 
short,  every  tool  used  in  the  fighter's  trade. 

Dawn  on  the  Western  Front.  Everything  is  in 
readiness  for  a  great  infantry  attack.  For  weeks  past 
the  preparations  have  been  in  progress.  The  roads 
leading  to  the  front  have  been  ground  to  powder  by 
the  endless  processions  of  heavy-laden  motor-lorries 
bringing  up  food,  ammunition,  and  supplies.  The  ad- 
vanced dumps  are  piled  high  with  cases  of  rifle  and 
machine-gun  cartridges,  trench-mortar  ammunition, 
shell  of  every  calibre  and  kind,  all  stencilled  with  the 
flaming  bomb  which  is  the  trade-mark  of  the  Army 
Ordnance.  Up  in  the  forward  observation-posts  intel- 
ligence officers  are  peering  anxiously  through  periscopes 


ORDNANCE  201 

into  the  fog-hung  wastes  of  No  Man's  Land.  In  the 
assembly  trenches  the  storm  troops  are  waiting  in 
silence  on  the  tapes  which  mark  the  positions  of  the 
various  units,  the  faces  of  the  men  showing  grim  and 
determined  under  their  steel  helmets.  Each  wears  a 
belt  containing  a  hundred  cartridges  in  clips;  his 
bayonet  is  fixed.  The  men  of  the  medical  detach- 
ments, distinguished  by  the  broad-bladed  bolos  at 
their  hips,  lean  against  their  up-ended  stretchers,  wait- 
ing for  the  beginning  of  the  bloody  business  which  will 
stain  those  stretchers  red.  The  officers,  a  trifle  ner- 
vous and  self-conscious,  stroll  up  and  down  the  ranks, 
examining  their  automatics  or  glancing  at  the  luminous 
dials  of  their  wrist-watches  to  note  the  approach  of 
the  zero  hour.  Rifles,  bayonets,  pistols,  bolos,  peri- 
scopes, cartridges,  together  with  the  clips  which  hold 
them  and  the  belts  in  which  they  are  carried — all  are 
ordnance. 

A  mile  or  so  in  the  rear  the  artillery  is  Hkewise 
waiting,  every  man  at  his  post.  The  slim  steel  pro- 
jectiles have  been  shoved  home  and  the  breech-blocks 
closed  upon  them;  the  barrage- tables  have  been 
worked  out  to  a  second,  the  ranges  to  a  yard;  the 
lids  of  the  caissons  are  raised,  reveahng  the  brass 
heads  of  the  shell  waiting  in  their  pigeonholes;  the 
gunners  are  grasping  the  lanyards.  Each  battery 
commander  stands  motionless,  one  arm  raised  high, 
eyes  glued  to  his  carefully  synchronized  watch.  The 
minute-hand,  creeping  forward  slowly — oh,  so  slowly — 
rests  at  last  upon  the  hour  set  for  the  beginning  of 
the  barrage.    The  upraised  arms  drop  like  semaphores, 


202      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

the  watching  gunners  pull  their  lanyards,  and  the 
heavens  seem  to  split  asunder  as  tongues  of  flame 
leap  from  the  eager  guns.  An  instant  later  thunder 
and  hghtning  burst  above  the  distant  German  trenches. 
Steel  falls  upon  them  as  water  falls  over  the  precipice 
at  Niagara.  The  earth  shakes,  the  air  quivers  to  the 
hell  of  sound.  The  cannoneers,  as  though  suddenly 
awakened  from  a  trance,  leap  into  action.  Bearing 
in  their  arms  the  steel  messengers  of  death,  they  dash 
between  the  caissons  and  the  guns,  sweating  like 
stokers  on  a  record-breaking  liner.  Farther  to  the 
rear  are  the  midcalibre  pieces,  the  "four-point-sevens," 
the  five  and  the  six  inch  guns  and  howitzers,  whose 
great  projectiles  go  shrieking  Rhineward  with  a  noise 
like  giants  tearing  mighty  strips  of  linen.  Huge  howit- 
zers, streaked  like  zebras  and  spotted  like  giraffes  by 
the  camoufleurs,  their  ugly  snouts  pointing  toward  the 
sky,  some  drawn  by  panting  tractors,  others  mounted 
on  the  tractors  themselves,  come  plunging  and  rock- 
ing across  the  broken  and  all  but  impassable  terrain 
to  take  up  new  positions.  The  dusty  roads  are  lined 
for  miles  with  columns  of  gray  trucks  laden  with  am- 
munition, for  the  stream  of  shell  between  the  dumps 
in  the  rear  and  the  batteries  at  the  front  must  never, 
even  for  an  instant,  halt  or  check.  So  close  are  the 
trucks  that  an  active  man  could,  it  seems,  travel  for 
miles,  without  ever  setting  foot  to  the  ground,  by  leap- 
ing from  the  tail  of  one  to  the  hood  of  another.  A 
fragment  from  a  German  shell  shatters  a  gun  and  puts 
it  out  of  action.  As  though  by  magic  two  great  trucks, 
tabloid  factories  on  wheels,  one  a  mobile  ordnance 


H    •= 


-  s 


ORDNANCE  203 

repair-shop,  the  other  a  storeroom  of  spare  parts,  ap- 
pear on  the  scene,  and  skilled  mechanics,  wearing  on 
their  collars  the  bomb  insignia  of  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment, repair  the  damaged  gun,  heedless  of  the 
fact  that  death  is  raining  all  about  them,  and  put  it 
into  action  again.  From  their  cleverly  camouflaged 
positions  far  in  the  rear  the  great  8  inch  and  9.2  inch 
howitzers,  and  the  8,  10,  12,  and  14  inch  guns  on  rail- 
way-mounts are  methodically  pounding  the  enemy's 
back  areas,  shelling  his  roads  and  bridges,  destroying  his 
ammunition-dumps  and  railroad-stations,  their  monster 
projectiles  cleaving  the  air  with  a  roar  like  invisible 
express-trains.  Save  only  the  men  themselves,  every- 
thing— ^guns  and  howitzers,  shrapnel  and  high  explosive, 
carriages,  railway-mounts,  tractors,  trucks,  limbers, 
caissons,  even  the  harness  on  the  horses — is  ordnance. 
From  out  of  the  smoke,  so  close  behind  the  rolling 
barrage  that  they  seem  to  be  moving  amid  the  burst- 
ing shell,  a  long  line  of  tanks — elephantine  monsters 
of  the  Mark  VIII  type  and  little,  agile,  humpbacked 
whippets — waddling  fonvard  across  the  welter  of  No 
Man's  Land,  wading  through  ooze  and  slime,  clamber- 
ing over  heaps  of  debris,  crushing  wire  entanglements 
as  easily  as  though  the}'  were  made  of  string,  rearing 
themselves  against  the  walls  of  concrete  pill-boxes  and 
then  crashing  down  upon  them,  straddling  in  their 
stride  the  yawning  chasms  of  the  German  trenches, 
but  always  pushing  fonvard,  like  terrible  and  ruthless 
prehistoric  monsters,  one-pounders  and  machine-guns 
spurting  death  from  the  loopholes  in  their  armored 
flanks.    Tanks  and  tank-guns  are  ordnance,  of  course. 


204      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

The  barrage  abruptly  lifts,  and  the  eager  infantry, 
pouring  out  of  the  trenches,  sweeps  forward  with  a 
roar.  Out  in  front,  forming  a  thin  fringe  to  the  leading 
wave  of  the  assault,  are  the  autoriflemen,  playing 
streams  of  lead  on  the  enemy  trenches  from  their 
Brownings  and  Chauchats  as  a  street-cleaner  plays  a 
stream  of  water  upon  the  asphalt  from  his  hose.  As 
the  barrage  lifts,  the  Germans,  emerging  from  the  dug- 
outs where  they  have  taken  shelter,  man  their  parapets, 
but  volleys  of  hand-grenades  drive  them  back  again. 
Through  the  wire  demolished  by  the  tanks  and  into 
the  shell-shattered  trenches  swarm  the  cheering  Yanks. 
Parties  of  "moppers-up"  hasten  from  dugout  to  dug- 
out, calling  upon  the  occupants  to  come  out  and  sur- 
render, and  when  they  do  not  comply,  tossing  hand 
or  gas  grenades  into  the  entrances  or  wrecking  the 
dugouts  with  mobile  charges.  The  captured  positions 
are  quickly  organized.  Machine-guns  and  trench- 
mortars  are  brought  up  and  placed  in  position.  Carts 
and  voiturettes,  ammunition-laden,  some  drawn  by 
mules,  others  by  hand,  come  forward  at  the  double. 
An  enemy  machine-gun  nest  is  located  and  promptly 
demolished  by  a  pair  of  Stokes  mortars,  which  send 
their  bombs  somersaulting  through  the  air,  as  a  juggler 
tosses  bottles,  in  an  unending  stream.  Then  the 
enemy  launches  a  counter-attack,  the  gray-clad  hordes 
advancing  doggedly  while  the  rifle-fire  crackles  along 
the  trenches  and  the  machine-guns  go  into  action  with 
a  clatter  which  sounds  like  a  boy  drawing  a  stick  along 
the  palings  of  a  picket  fence.  Rifle-grenades  and  shell 
from  the  little  37-mm.  infantry  cannon  burst  amid  the 


ORDNANCE  205 

advancing  Germans,  gaps  appearing  here  and  there 
amid  their  close-locked  ranks  as  patches  appear  in  a 
moth-eaten  fur  when  it  is  beaten.  Before  this  hail  of 
death  the  counter-attack  falters,  checks,  crumbles,  and 
finally  breaks,  as  an  ocean  roller  dissipates  itself  against 
a  concrete  pier  in  futile  spray.  Everything  used  in 
the  assault  and  in  the  repulse  of  the  counter-attack — 
service  and  automatic  rifles,  37-mm.  cannon,  rifle,  gas 
and  hand  grenades,  machine-guns  and  trench-mortars, 
ammunition-carts  and  voiturettes,  mobile  charges — is 
furnished  by  the  Ordnance  Department. 

Reports  come  in  that  the  enemy  is  reforming  his 
shattered  columns  in  the  shelter  of  a  ridge,  preparatory 
to  launching  another  attack,  whereupon  the  brigade 
commander  orders  a  machine-gun  company  to  open  in- 
direct fire,  the  rain  of  bullets  mowing  down  the  unseen 
and  now  thoroughly  demoralized  Germans  as  effec- 
tually as  though  they  were  advancing  in  close  order 
across  the  open.  Not  only  the  machine-guns  them- 
selves, the  tripods  on  which  they  are  mounted,  the 
ammunition,  the  belts  in  which  it  is  contained  and  the 
carts  in  which  it  is  brought  up,  but  the  delicate  scien- 
tific instruments  necessary  for  indirect  fire — panoramic 
sights,  clinometers,  transits,  angle-of-sight  instruments, 
alidades,  squares,  protractors — are  all  provided  by 
Army  Ordnance. 

Meanwhile,  simultaneously  with  the  conflict  on 
the  ground,  an  aerial  battle  has  been  in  progress  high 
in  the  blue,  the  German  airmen,  clearly  distinguished 
by  the  huge  black  crosses  painted  on  the  under  side  of 
their  planes,  attacking  the  American  flyers  who  are 


2o6      THE  ARI^IY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

engaged  in  locating  and  photographing  the  enemy  posi- 
tions and  in  directing  the  fire  of  the  American  guns. 
To  the  support  of  the  slow-moving  observation  and 
artillery  planes  speed  the  fighters  of  the  escadrilles  de 
chasse,  their  stripped  machine-guns,  synchronized  to 
fire  between  the  blades  of  their  propellers,  blazing 
away  at  the  rate  of  i,2c»o  shots  a  minute.  Their  ma- 
chine-gun belts  are  loaded  with  tracer,  armor-piercing, 
and  incendiary  cartridges  in  rotation,  the  first  per- 
mitting the  gunner  to  correct  his  aim  by  following 
the  bullet's  flight,  the  second  to  pierce  the  armored 
tanks  of  the  enemy  machines,  the  third  to  set  them  on 
fire  by  igniting  the  leaking  petrol  or  to  destroy  ob- 
servation-balloons, while  the  belts  themselves,  made 
of  disintegrating  steel  links,  fall  apart  as  they  are  fired. 
Giant  bombing  planes,  keeping  to  the  upper  levels, 
head  for  the  German  back  areas  to  drop  their  ugly 
eggs,  ranging  in  size  from  the  comparatively  small 
bombs  used  against  troops  in  the  open  to  the  1600- 
pound  monsters  which  produce  craters  100  feet  in 
diameter  and  50  feet  deep,  upon  the  enemy's  dumps, 
warehouses,  roads,  bridges,  and  railway-stations. 
Everything  save  only  the  airplane  itself — the  syn- 
chronized machine-gun,  the  disintegrating  belt  and 
the  special  ammunition,  the  bombs  in  all  their  vary- 
ing sizes,  the  mechanisms  for  suspending  and  releasing 
the  bombs,  the  sights  to  determine  the  exact  moment 
for  release,  even  the  ingenious  electrical  heaters  for 
preventing  the  lubricating-oil  in  the  guns  from  freez- 
ing at  high  altitudes — all  these  are  provided  by  Army 
Ordnance. 


ORDNANCE  207 

Down  upon  our  own  back  areas  swoop  raiding 
enemy  aircraft,  tiny  specks  against  the  blue,  travelling 
at  140  miles  an  hour — the  most  difficult  targets  in  the 
world.  But  complicated  instruments,  designed  by 
Ordnance,  are  sighted  upon  them,  determining  their 
altitude,  speed,  and  direction,  and  taking  into  account 
the  windage  and  the  trajectory  of  the  shell,  predicting 
the  exact  positions  of  the  planes  when  our  antiaircraft 
artillery  opens  upon  them.  The  slim  barrels  of  a  bat- 
tery of  antiaircraft  guns,  mounted  on  motor-trucks 
for  mobility,  are  raised  to  the  indicated  elevation,  and 
a  salvo  of  shell  goes  whining  skyward,  each  projectile 
fitted  with  a  special  fuse  so  delicate  in  action  that  con- 
tact with  the  thin  fabric  of  an  airplane's  wing  is  suf- 
ficient to  explode  it,  and  yet  so  designed  that  it  will 
not  explode  if,  in  loading,  it  should  be  accidentally 
dropped  upon  the  ground.     Ordnance  again. 

Night  falls.  The  guns  are  silent.  From  along  the 
line  of  the  captured  positions  rise  fireworks  like  those 
which  delight  the  summer  multitudes  at  Coney  Island. 
Star-shell,  fired  from  Veriy  pistols,  make  graceful  fiery 
arcs  against  the  purple-velvet  sky,  bursting,  as  they 
descend,  into  fountains  of  sparks  which  illumine  the 
positions  where  the  weary  Germans  are.  A  night- 
bombing  plane,  prowling  above  the  enemy's  lines,  un- 
able to  see  its  target  in  the  darkness,  releases  a  para- 
chute-flare which  slowly  sinks  earthward,  illuminating 
the  ground  for  a  radius  of  a  mile  as  brilliantly  as  though 
it  were  day.  From  the  American  positions  colored  sig- 
nal stars — red,  green,  white,  or  "caterpillar"  combina- 
tions— fall  slowly  across  the  sky,  conveying  all  sorts  of 


2o8      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

cryptic  messages  to  regimental  and  brigade  headquar- 
ters in  the  rear,  to  the  aircraft  circHng  above,  or  to 
the  patrols  scouting  in  No  Man's  Land.  All  these 
pyrotechnics  were  designed  and  made  by  Ordnance. 

But  the  work  of  Ordnance  does  not  end  when 
the  guns  cease  firing.  Far  from  it.  The  wear  of 
battle  on  weapons  of  all  kinds  is  enormous:  guns 
must  be  relined  and  fitted  with  new  recoil  mechanisms; 
shattered  wheels  and  trails  must  be  replaced;  broken 
rifles,  pistols,  bayonets,  machine-guns,  scabbards,  hel- 
mets, trench-knives,  periscopes,  caissons,  limbers, 
tractors,  trucks,  tanks,  must  be  collected  and  trans- 
ported to  the  rear  for  repair  or  salvage.  For  the  main- 
tenance of  its  material  Army  Ordnance  had  in  the 
field  many  special  facihties:  mobile  repair-shops, 
miniature  machine-shops  mounted  on  trucks  to  ac- 
company each  division;  semiheavy  repair-shops 
mounted  on  five- ton  trailers  to  accompany  each  corps; 
heavy  semipermanent  repair-shops  for  each  army; 
railway  repair-shops  for  the  railway  artillery,  each 
successively  less  mobile  but  of  greater  capacity.  In 
addition  to  this  vast  equipment  for  repair  work  in 
the  field  there  were  the  complete  expeditionary  base 
repair-shops,  requiring  for  their  operation  a  personnel 
three  times  as  large  as  the  peace-time  organizations 
of  all  the  arsenals  in  the  United  States  put  together, 
capable  of  repairing  each  month  2,000  pistols,  7,000 
machine-guns,  50,000  rifles,  of  overhauling  2,000  mo- 
tor-vehicles, and  of  relining  a  thousand  cannon.  Ord- 
nance once  more. 

And  back  of  all  this  was  the  mammoth  organiza- 


ORDNANCE  209 

tion  created  by  Army  Ordnance  in  America  itself: 
arsenals,  gun-foundries,  rifle  and  revolver  factories, 
wagon-plants,  ammunition-plants,  nitrate-plants,  silk- 
mills,  tanneries,  harness  and  leather-goods  factories, 
8,000  manufacturing  plants  in  all,  in  which  nearly 
4,000,000  workers  toiled  day  and  night  to  produce 
the  100,000  separate  Ordnance  items  required  by  our 
armies  oversea.  Beyond  the  activities  that  I  have 
just  sketched,  the  Ordnance  Department  didn't  do 
much  in  the  v/ar. 

Now  it  must  be  kept  constantly  in  mind  that  the 
Ordnance  problem  with  which  America  was  confronted 
upon  her  entry  into  the  war  was  essentially  a  non- 
commercial one.  By  that  I  mean  that  the  articles 
required  by  the  Ordnance  Department  had  an  ex- 
tremely restricted  use,  in  many  cases,  indeed,  no  use 
at  all,  in  the  commercial  life  of  the  nation.  In  the 
piping  times  of  peace  what  use  did  we  have  for  field- 
guns,  howitzers,  machine-guns,  automatic  rifles,  anti- 
aircraft and  railway  artiller>%  shell,  caissons,  hmbers, 
synchronizing  devices,  steel  helmets,  trench-mortars, 
periscopes,  tanks,  tracer,  armor-piercing,  and  incen- 
diary ammunition  ?  Unlike  the  nations  of  continental 
Europe,  we  not  only  did  not  believe  in  war  or  antic- 
ipate war,  but  we  deliberately  blinded  ourselves  to 
the  possibility  of  becoming  involved  in  war,  so  that 
we  were,  consequently,  wholly  unprepared  for  war 
when  it  came.  Hence,  having  no  use  for  the  tools  of 
war  in  the  pursuits  of  peace,  we  had  little,  if  any, 
knowledge  of  how  to  manufacture  them.    The  Euro- 


2IO      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

pean  Powers,  on  the  other  hand,  having  for  centuries 
sat  on  a  powder-magazine  which,  as  they  perfectly 
realized,  might  blow  up  at  any  moment,  had  prepared 
themselves  to  meet  the  conditions  which  would  in- 
evitably result  from  such  an  explosion  by  giving  gov- 
ernment support  to  private  industry  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  war  material.  Thus  were  developed  such  vast 
ordnance  industries  as  Krupp  in  Germany,  Schneider- 
Creusot  in  France,  Skoda  in  Austria,  Ansaldo  in  Italy, 
which,  though  operating  as  private  firms  in  time  of 
peace,  were  always  under  government  supervision, 
and  automatically  passed  into  government  control  in 
time  of  war.  But  even  the  great  armaments  main- 
tained by  Germany  could  not  utilize  in  peace-time 
the  enormous  volume  of  war  material  produced  at 
Essen.  Yet  it  was  imperative  that  the  huge  organiza- 
tion should  be  kept  intact  and  ready  for  the  war  which 
would  one  day  come.  In  order  to  maintain  its  organ- 
ization and,  so  far  as  possible,  its  output,  Krupp's  was 
encouraged,  therefore,  to  seek  foreign  markets  for  its 
surplus  products,  Germany's  diplomatic,  consular,  and 
commercial  representatives  virtually  becoming  Krupp 
sales-agents  in  every  corner  of  the  globe.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  wherever  there  was  a  promise  of 
fighting,  whether  in  China,  in  Mexico,  in  Abyssinia,  in 
Venezuela,  or  in  the  Balkans,  war  material  bearing 
the  trade-mark  of  the  great  ironmaster  of  Essen  was 
found  in  the  hands  of  the  prospective  belligerents.  If 
they  could  not  pay  cash,  they  were  given  credit,  often 
long  credit,  and,  when  they  did  not  possess  credit,  they 
usually  were  given  the  arms  anyway.     In  this  manner 


ORDNANCE  211 

the  German  ordnance-machine  was  kept  oiled  and 
active,  largely  by  foreign  money,  against  the  day  when 
Germany  would  have  need  for  its  maximum  output 
herself.  Thus  the  government  at  Berlin  had  at  hand, 
in  time  of  peace,  a  tremendous  and  highly  trained  in- 
dustrial organization  which  fitted  neatly  into  the  Ger- 
man war-machine  in  time  of  war.  The  same  was  true, 
though  in  lesser  measure,  of  the  great  French,  Italian, 
and  Austrian  ordnance  concerns.  We  in  the  United 
States,  however,  had  nothing  of  the  sort.  The  Beth- 
lehem Steel  Company  manufactured  a  limited  amount 
of  artillery,  it  is  true,  and  the  Colt,  Winchester,  Sav- 
age, and  Remington  corporations  manufactured  small 
arms,  though  mainly  for  sporting  purposes,  but  they 
made  them  without  any  hope  of  government  encour- 
agement or  co-operation,  and  they  marketed  them  in 
foreign  countries  without  any  save  the  most  casual 
assistance  from  our  diplomatic  and  consular  officials. 
In  certain  cases,  indeed,  the  government  actively  dis- 
couraged American  arms  manufacturers  from  disposing 
of  their  wares  to  foreign  belligerents. 

By  the  assurance  of  steady  employment  and  lucra- 
tive remuneration  the  great  European  ordnance  man- 
ufacturers attracted  to  their  employ  men  of  excep- 
tional technical  ability,  thus  forming  a  large  and  highly 
trained  personnel  with  long  experience  in  manufactur- 
ing the  tools  of  war.  The  traditional  policy  of  the 
United  States,  on  the  contrary,  was  to  maintain  in 
government  employ  a  small,  a  ver>^  small,  group  of 
technically  trained  officers  who,  according  to  our  care- 
less American  theor>',  would  be  able  to  design  and 


212       THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

produce  enough  ordnance  to  meet  the  needs  of  our 
army  in  the  remote  and  unlikely  contingency  that  we 
should  ever  become  involved  in  war.  How  ridiculously 
inadequate  was  this  personnel  will  be  realized  when  I 
say  that  there  were  but  ninety-seven  officers  in  the 
Ordnance  Department  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 
How  enormous  were  the  requirements  of  the  suddenly 
embattled  nation  is  strikingly  emphasized  by  the  fact 
that  11,000  Ordnance  officers  were  required  for  our 
first  5,000,000  men.  All  other  branches  of  the  service 
underwent  similar  expansion  to  a  greater  or  less  ex- 
tent, it  is  true,  but  whereas  Signal  Corps  officers  could 
be  recruited  from  the  telegraph  and  telephone  com- 
panies. Motor  Transport  officers  from  the  automobile 
industry.  Railway  Transport  officers  from  the  great 
railway  systems,  Medical  officers  from  the  ranks  of 
the  country's  surgeons  and  physicians,  Engineer  officers 
from  the  various  branches  of  the  engineering  profes- 
sion. Quartermaster  officers  from  the  packing  and 
produce  concerns,  the  clothing  manufacturers,  and 
the  building  trades,  paymasters  from  the  banks  and 
financial  institutions,  judge-advocates  from  the  mem- 
bers of  the  bar,  there  was  no  field  of  American  endeavor 
to  which  the  War  Department  could  turn  for  officers 
trained  in  the  highly  technical  and  speciaHzed  profes- 
sion of  ordnance  design  and  manufacture.  How  could 
there  be?  There  had  never  been  any  demand  for 
tanks,  for  trench-mortars,  for  airplane  drop-bombs. 
Ergo,  there  was  no  one  in  this  country  who  possessed 
other  than  a  vague  and  theoretical  knowledge  of  how 
to  design  or  manufacture  them.     Therefore,  we  had  to 


ORDNANCE  213 

set  about  training  men  to  do  these  things.  And  we 
could  not  train  these  men  in  a  week  or  a  month.  Ord- 
nance designing,  remember,  requires  the  very  highest 
form  of  mechanical  and  chemical  engineering  skill;  its 
production  is  a  highly  specialized  industry.  A  knowl- 
edge of  its  requirements  was  confined,  as  I  have  ex- 
plained, to  the  ninety-seven  Ordnance  officers  of  the 
regular  establishment  and  to  a  handful  of  highly  sal- 
aried experts  in  the  employ  of  certain  private  plants; 
the  facilities  for  its  production  were  limited  to  six  gov- 
ernment arsenals  and  to  two  large  private  concerns. 
The  initial  problem  of  Army  Ordnance,  therefore,  was 
to  disseminate  on  a  nation-wide  scale  the  special 
knowledge  possessed  by  this  handful  of  oflScers  and 
experts  and  the  special  facilities  possessed  by  these 
few  arsenals  and  factories.  In  our  endeavor  to  ac- 
quaint the  nation  with  the  requirements  of  the  Ord- 
nance Department  we  naturally  turned  to  our  Allies, 
who  freely  placed  at  our  disposal  the  great  volume  of 
special  data  on  the  subject  which  they  had  collected 
during  three  years  of  war  and  which  had  resulted  from 
the  many  costly  experiments  and  investigations  which 
they  had  conducted  prior  to  the  war — plans,  specifica- 
tions, working  models,  secret  devices,  jealously  guarded 
formulas,  even  complete  manufacturing  processes. 
But,  even  with  this  great  mass  of  detailed  knowledge 
at  our  disposal,  its  translation  into  terms  compre- 
hensible to  American  engineers  and  practicable  for 
American  manufacturers  was  in  itself  a  perplexing 
problem.  The  chief  obstacles  to  our  use  of  foreign 
designs,  specifications,  and  formulas  lay,  in  the  case 


214      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

of  French  and  Italian  designs,  in  the  fact  that  they 
were  written  in  different  languages  and  expressed  in 
different  units  of  measurement,  the  principal  difficulty 
involved  in  the  adoption  of  Enghsh  ideas  being  the 
radical  differences  in  the  manufacturing  practices  of 
the  two  nations. 

During  the  early  days  of  the  war  it  was  repeatedly 
charged,  both  on  the  floors  of  both  houses  of  Congress 
and  in  the  editorial  columns  of  newspapers  and  maga- 
zines, that,  owing  to  a  breakdown  of  the  Ordnance 
Department,  we  were  compelled  to  beg  from  our  Allies 
war  material  which  they  could  ill  afford  to  spare.  Let 
it  be  clear  that  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment, but,  in  view  of  the  wide  circulation  given  to 
these  unfounded  assertions,  I  would  like  to  disprove 
them  by  quotations  from  two  official  communications. 
The  first  is  a  telegram  from  the  mission,  headed  by 
Colonel  E.  M.  House  and  including  Admiral  Benson 
of  the  navy  and  General  Tasker  H.  Bliss  of  the  army, 
which  was  sent  to  Europe  in  the  fall  of  191 7  for  the 
purpose  of  ascertaining  how  the  American  Expedition- 
ary Forces  could  most  quickly  be  rendered  effective. 
It  reads: 

''The  representatives  of  Great  Britain  and  France 
state  that  their  production  of  artillery,  field,  medium, 
and  heavy,  is  now  established  on  so  large  a  scale  that 
they  are  able  to  equip  complete  all  American  divisions 
as  they  arrive  in  France  during  the  year  1918  with  the 
best  make  of  British  and  French  guns  and  howitzers. 
With  a  view,  therefore,  to  expediting  and  facilitating 
the  equipment  of  the  American  armies  in  France,  and, 


FILLING  A  POWDER-BAG  FOR  A   16  IXCH  GUN. 


ORDNANCE  215 

second,  securing  the  maximum  ultimate  development 
of  the  munitions  supply  with  the  minimum  strain  upon 
available  tonnage,  the  representatives  of  Great  Britain 
and  France  propose  that  the  field,  medium,  and  heavy 
artillery  be  supplied  during  1918,  and  as  long  as  may 
be  convenient,  from  British  and  French  gun  factories." 

These  offers  were,  of  course,  predicated  on  our 
continuing  to  furnish  all  raw  material,  all  rough- 
machined  forgings,  and  all  finished  components  in 
quantities  at  least  equal  to  those  which  we  had  been 
shipping  to  our  allies  since  our  entry  into  the  war  for 
finishing  or  assembly  abroad.  By  our  acceptance  of 
these  offers  we  not  only  obtained  a  breathing  spell 
which  enabled  us  to  plan  an  ordnance  programme 
which  would  insure  the  maximum  production  of  artil- 
lery and  artillery  ammunition  by  the  close  of  1918, 
but  the  new  arrangement,  coming  into  effect  at  a 
period  when  the  submarine  sinkings  were  at  their 
height,  insured  us  against  the  possible  loss  of  the  raw 
material  only  and  not  also  the  time  and  labor  which 
we  would  have  had  to  put  into  the  finished  article. 
In  other  words,  by  this  co-operative  arrangement  we 
increased  our  production  to  the  maximum  and  reduced 
our  possible  losses  to  the  minimum.  How  the  French 
regarded  this  arrangement  is  shown  by  the  words  of 
M.  Andre  Tardieu,  then  French  High  Commissioner 
in  the  United  States: 

"From  the  industrial  view-point  the  unity  of  effort 
created  will  produce  happy  results  without  precedent. 
From  the  financial  standpoint  it  is  possible  to  hope 
ihat  the  purchase  by  the  United  States  of  French  artil- 


2i6      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

lery  material  will  create  an  improvement  in  exchange, 
much  to  be  desired.  From  the  military  point  of  view 
it  is  evident  that  uniformity  of  type  of  guns  and  muni- 
tions for  armies  fighting  on  the  same  battle-fields  is  an 
appreciable  guarantee  of  efficiency." 

The  adoption  for  our  own  manufacturing  pro- 
gramme of  the  British  types  of  heavy  howitzers  en- 
tailed no  unusual  complication,  but  the  adoption  of 
the  French  types  of  field-guns  and  light  howitzers  in- 
troduced a  factor  whose  importance  the  lay  mind  had 
theretofore  not  fully  realized.  I  refer  to  the  French  use 
of  the  metric  system,  in  which,  of  course,  all  the  plans, 
specifications,  and  drawings  furnished  us  by  the  French 
were  figured.  One  inch  =  2.54001  centimetres.  The 
full  significance  of  this  difference  in  the  national  units 
of  measurement  is  not  apparent  until  one  reflects  that 
not  a  single  standard  American  drill,  reamer,  tap,  or 
die  will  accurately  produce  the  results  demanded  by 
the  specifications  on  a  French  drawing.  Furthermore, 
the  French  standards  for  bar  stock,  for  rolled  sheets 
and  plates,  for  structural  steel  shapes  such  as  angles 
and  I-beams,  even  for  rivet-holes  and  rivet  spacing, 
are  far  different  from  American  standards.  Given 
complete,  up-to-date  drawings  of  French  material  (and 
in  many  cases  these  were  not  obtainable) ,  the  Ordnance 
engineer  was  immediately  confronted  with  the  neces- 
sity of  either  changing  the  American  shop  equipment 
— drills,  reamers,  taps,  dies,  and  the  like — to  conform 
with  French  standards  of  measurement,  thereby  dis- 
carding the  advantage  of  quick  procurement  of  stand- 
ard roUed  stock,  bolts,  nuts,  rivets,  cotter-pins,  or  of 


ORDNANCE  217 

doing  what  he  did  do— translating  the  centimetres  in 
which  the  French  specifications  were  figured  into 
inches.  But  this  was  by  no  means  all.  French  hidus- 
trial  practice  develops  the  highly  skilled  all-round 
machinist  to  whom  is  left  considerable  discretion  in 
determining  finished  dimensions  and  in  fitting  assem- 
bled parts;  American  industrial  practice  develops  the 
machine  speciahst  who  works  to  tolerances — to  maxi- 
mum and  minimum  gauges — and  whose  output  accord- 
ingly requires  little  or  no  hand-fitting  of  assembled 
parts.  The  French  mechanic  always  sees  the  complete 
assembled  unit;  the  American  confines  his  attention 
to  the  particular  component  on  which  he  is  engaged 
and  the  gauges  which  check  the  accuracy  of  his  work. 
So,  in  translating  the  French  drawings,  they  had  to 
be  adapted  not  only  to  the  material  phase  of  American 
shop  practice,  but  the  personal  equation  of  the  Amer- 
ican workman  had  also  to  be  considered.  Tolerances 
had  to  be  prescribed,  Hmit  gauges  had  to  be  provided, 
jigs  and  fixtures,  special  milling  cutters,  and  a  hundred 
other  tools  and  instruments  had  to  be  designed  and 
manufactured.  But  our  manufacturing  difficulties  did 
not  end  even  there.  Though  the  French  gave  us  the 
drawings  of  even  their  most  jealously  guarded  secret 
devices,  they  could  not  give  us  that  intangible  some- 
thing which,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  I  can  best  de- 
scribe as  innate  mechanical  skill  of  so  high  an  order 
that  it  approaches  genius,  which  is  so  marked  a  char- 
acteristic of  the  best  French  artisans  and  mechanics. 
Take,  for  example,  the  problem  involved  in  the  manu- 
facture of  the  hydropneumatic  recuperator  for  absorb- 


2i8      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

ing  the  shock  of  recoil  when  a  gun  is  fired — the  recoil 
mechanism,  as  it  is  commonly  called.  This  marvellous 
device  performs  a  task  equivalent  to  quietly  halting 
the  flight  of  a  shell  from  a  75-mm.  field-gun  before  it 
has  travelled  forty  inches  from  the  muzzle.  So  in- 
tricate is  the  mechanism,  so  delicately  adjusted,  that 
although  it  was  introduced  twenty  years  ago,  it  had 
never  until  recently  been  successfully  manufactured 
outside  of  France.  Though  the  Germans  captured 
hundreds  of  these  famous  guns,  the  combined  engineer- 
ing skill  of  Krupp's,  with  the  model  before  them,  was 
never  able  to  manufacture  a  single  one. 

The  inherent  difficulties  encountered  in  producing 
these  new  types  of  ordnance,  great  as  they  were,  were 
dwarfed,  however,  by  the  vastness  and  variety  of  the 
quantities  involved.  Let  me  see  if  I  can  make  this 
clear.  Compare  the  question  of  ordnance  supply  with 
that  of  subsistence,  for  example.  A  man  eats  no  more 
in  time  of  war  than  he  does  in  peace.  Speaking  roughly, 
it  is  fifty  times  as  difficult  to  feed  5,000,000  men  as  it 
is  to  feed  100,000  men,  whether  the  smaller  force  rep- 
resents peace  conditions  and  the  larger  one  war  condi- 
tions, or  not.  Consequently,  the  strain  thrown  upon 
the  organization  charged  with  the  feeding  of  the  army 
increased  only  in  direct  numerical  proportion  to  the 
strength  of  the  army.  But,  though  war  did  not  in- 
crease the  demand  of  the  individual  infantryman  for 
food,  it  enormously  increased  his  demand  for  small- 
arms  ammunition.  Before  the  war  each  infantryman 
in  the  United  States  Army  required  276  cartridges  a 
year;  during  the  war  this  jumped  to  2,372  cartridges, 


ORDNANCE  219 

an  increase  of  1,040  per  cent.  In  peace-time  each 
machine-gun  used  approximately  6,000  rounds  of  am- 
munition; after  the  declaration  of  hostilities  each  of 
these  voracious  little  weapons  required  228,875  rounds 
— an  increase  of  4,600  per  cent.  Likewise,  the  needs 
•  of  the  3-inch  field-guns  increased  18,200  per  cent  and 
those  for  6-inch  guns  73,400  per  cent  over  their  peace- 
time requirements.  Here  is  another  way  of  stating 
the  same  thing.  If  a  pound  of  bread  a  day  satisfies 
a  man's  appetite  in  time  of  peace,  a  pound  of  bread 
per  day  will  satisfy  it  in  time  of  war;  but  if  a  pound 
of  metal  represented  the  ordnance  which  he  required 
in  time  of  peace,  from  10  to  700  pounds  of  metal 
would  represent  the  ordnance  which  he  will  require 
upon  going  to  war. 

The  constantly  increasing  tendency  toward  em- 
ploying mechanical  and  chemical  means  of  warfare 
produced  another  difficulty.  Before  the  United  States 
entered  the  war,  a  total  of  50  machine-guns  was  the 
standard  equipment  of  an  infantry  division.  But  when 
the  Armistice  was  signed  the  tables  of  organization! 
gave  each  division  768  automatic  rifles  and  262  ma- 
chine-guns, an  increase  in  this  t}^e  of  equipment  of 
more  than  2,000  per  cent.  Furthermore,  the  General 
Staff  of  the  A.  E.  F.  was  working  on  plans  for  the  re- 
organization of  infantry  units  which  would  have  in- 
creased the  number  of  automatic  rifles  in  each  com- 
pany to  24 — approximately  one  for  every  ten  men — 
and  which  would  have  established  a  new  equipment 
of  192  automatic  rifles  for  each  artillery  brigade.  It 
is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  that  every  additional 


/ 


220      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

automatic  arm,  with  its  insatiable  appetite  for  cart- 
ridges, necessitated  a  corresponding  increase  in  the 
requirements  for  ammunition  and  for  ammunition 
supply. 

Before  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  practi- 
cally all  field-artillery,  including  guns,  howitzers,  lim- 
bers, caissons,  repair-wagons,  and  the  like,  was  drawn 
by  horses  or  mules,  the  Ordnance  Department  furnish- 
ing the  harness  and  other  horse  equipment.  The  diffi- 
culty in  obtaining  an  adequate  supply  of  animals,  how- 
ever, together  with  the  high  rate  of  animal  mortality, 
the  constantly  increasing  weight  of  the  guns,  and  the 
nature  of  the  terrain,  made  necessary  the  wholesale 
motorization  of  the  artillery,  which  was  proceeding  at 
an  amazing  rate  when  hostilities  ended.  Guns  are  now 
hauled  by  tractors;  caissons  and  limbers  have  been 
displaced  by  motor  ammunition- trucks;  complete  ma- 
chine-shops, mounted  on  motor-trucks,  supplant  the 
old  forge-limbers  and  battery  and  store  wagons;  ma- 
chine-guns, instead  of  being  packed  on  mules  or  drawn 
by  horses,  are  usually  moved  to  the  front  by  various 
forms  of  motor  transport  and  are  often  taken  into 
action  in  tanks.  Even  the  large-calibre  field-pieces 
are  now  mounted  on  caterpillar  tractors,  which  not 
only  provide  means  of  transportation  for  the  guns  but 
also  the  means  for  aiming  them.  These  changes  nat- 
urally brought  others  in  their  wake.  The  higher  speed 
of  motor-drawn  artillery  demanded  rubber-tired  wheels. 
The  substitution  of  the  automatic  rifle,  with  its  terrific 
burst  of  fire,  for  the  ordinary  shoulder  rifle,  entailed 
a  tremendous  increase  in  the  capacity  of  the  ammuni- 


ORDNANCE  221 

tion-trains.  So,  as  the  tools  of  war  became  more  me- 
chanically efficient,  they  became  correspondingly  more 
complicated  to  manufacture. 

Now  there  were  no  limitations  imposed  as  to  where 
these  tools  should  be  procured.  No  one  but  a  fool  or 
an  ignoramus  would  have  insisted  that,  engaged  as  we 
were  in  a  life-and-death  struggle  with  a  savage  and 
ruthless  enemy,  we  should  only  procure  the  weapons 
with  which  to  subdue  that  enemy  within  our  own  bor- 
ders. If  there  is  a  marauder  in  your  grounds,  your 
chief  concern  is  to  get  a  gun;  you  do  not  particularly 
care  whether  it  is  your  own  gun  or  one  loaned  you  by 
a  neighbor,  so  long  as  it  will  shoot  and  shoot  straight. 
The  problem  of  the  Ordnance  Department,  then,  was 
to  procure  arms  for  our  armies,  to  procure  them  in 
sufficient  quantities,  and  to  procure  them  quickly — 
not  to  procure  them  in  America  only.  To  have  set  any 
such  limitations  on  our  effort,  no  matter  how  flatter- 
ing it  might  have  been  to  national  pride,  would  have 
cost  untold  lives,  it  would  have  greatly  prolonged  the 
war,  and  it  might  well  have  produced  a  different  and 
far  less  happy  result.  So,  because  our  alHes  were  both 
able  and  glad  to  supply  us  from  their  surplus  store, 
and  because  it  was  the  only  way  that  we  could  obtain 
immediate  dehvery  of  certam  things  without  which 
our  armies  could  not  fight,  we  purchased  artillery 
abroad,  as  well  as  ammunition  for  that  artillery;  we 
also  purchased  airplanes,  automatic  rifles,  clothing, 
food,  surgical  instruments,  medicinal  supplies;  we 
sent  our  forestr}'  battalions  into  the  French  forests 
for   lumber — they   produced    50,000,000   feet   in    the 


222      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

month  of  October,  191 7,  alone;  we  quarried  their 
stone  to  build  our  roads;  we  drew  on  their  reservoirs 
for  water — all  highly  proper  courses  of  action,  adopted 
with  the  fullest  approval  of  France  and  England,  and, 
indeed,  at  their  express  suggestion,  for  the  purpose  of 
utilizing  the  available  ship  tonnage  of  the  world  to  the 
best  and  quickest  advantage  in  effecting  the  defeat 
of  our  common  enemy.  Critics  have  brought  the 
charge  that  we  purchased  ordnance  from  our  allies, 
intimating  that  it  was  a  scandalous  proceeding  for 
which  the  Ordnance  Department  should  hang  its  head 
in  shame.  Yet  I  do  not  recall  that  those  critics  ever 
completed  the  story  by  stating  that  we  sold  to  our 
allies  ordnance  and  raw  materials  for  ordnance  to  a 
value  five  times  greater  than  our  purchases  from  them. 

But  even  with  free  access  to  and  unlimited  credit 
in  the  markets  of  the  world,  grave  questions  of  priority 
had  to  be  decided;  the  impending  exhaustion  of  the 
world's  resources  in  certain  raw  materials  and  certain 
classes  of  skilled  labor  demanded  constantly  increasing 
consideration.  It  was  of  paramount  importance,  of 
course,  that  our  own  preparations  for  war  should  not 
in  the  slightest  degree  delay  or  lessen  the  assistance 
which  we  had  been  rendering  our  allies,  and  which 
they  had  come  to  regard  as  perhaps  the  most  important 
factor  in  calculating  their  ability  to  hold  the  enemy  in 
check  until  our  military  effort  could  become  effective. 
Furthermore,  there  had  to  be  taken  into  consideration 
the  demands  of  the  American  Navy,  which  required 
heavy  forgings  and  other  material,  as  well  as  trained 
labor,  of  the  very  type  so  necessary  for  the  solution  of 


ORDNANCE  223 

the  army  ordnance  problem.  On  the  assumption  that 
it  would  be  of  little  avail  to  build  ordnance  for  use  in 
the  field  in  France  unless  there  were  cargo-ships  in 
which  to  transport  it  and  war-ships  to  protect  those 
cargo-boats  against  submarine  attack,  the  require- 
ments of  army  ordnance  were  made  secondary  to  the 
demands  of  our  allies,  of  our  nav}',  and  of  our  merchant 
marine. 

The  supreme  difficulty  encountered  in  the  solu- 
tion of  the  ordnance  problem  is  best  stated  in  the  words 
of  the  Honorable  Winston  Churchill,  then  British  INIin- 
ister  of  Munitions,  in  his  report  to  the  British  War 
Council  for  the  year  191 7: 

"In  the  fourth  year  of  the  war  we  are  no  longer 
tapping  the  stored-up  resources  of  national  industry 
or  mobilizing  them  and  applying  them  for  the  first 
time  to  war.  The  magnitude  of  the  effort  and  of 
achievement  approximates  continually  to  the  limits  of 
possibility.  Already  in  many  directions  the  frontiers 
are  in  sight.  It  is  therefore  not  necessary  merely  to 
expand,  but  to  go  back  over  the  ground  already  cov- 
ered and  by  more  economical  processes,  by  closer  or- 
ganization, and  by  thrifty  and  harmonious  methods  to 
glean  and  gather  a  further  reinforcement  of  war 
power." 

The  situation  in  which  the  British  found  them- 
selves in  191 7,  the  critical  year  of  the  war,  as  depicted 
by  Mr.  Churchill,  was  also,  though  to  an  even  greater 
degree,  the  situation  of  the  French,  and,  to  a  lesser 
degree,  our  own.  Due  to  the  gradual  but  increasing 
exhaustion  of  the  world's  resources  of  raw  material 


2  24      THE  ARIMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

and  skilled  labor,  the  production  of  ordnance,  at  first 
merely  a  manufacturing  problem,  became  more  and 
more,  as  the  limit  of  expansion  was  produced,  a  prob- 
lem of  securing  raw  materials,  skilled  labor,  and  trans- 
portation. The  cumulative  effect  of  the  difficulties 
which  I  have  enumerated  produced  a  task  of  such 
magnitude  as  to  be  literally  beyond  the  conception  of 
the  human  mind.  It  involved  the  mobilization  of  sci- 
ence and  industry  and  their  co-ordination  with  the 
military  establishment  to  an  extent  approaching  the 
limits  of  human  endeavor.  Indeed,  I  am  indulging  in 
no  mere  peroration,  no  idle  figure  of  speech,  when  I 
assert  that  the  Army  Ordnance  effort  represented  the 
application  of  a  greater  physical  effort  than  was  ever 
directed  toward  the  accomplishment  of  a  single  pur- 
pose in  the  history  of  mankind. 

Just  as  a  track  meet  consists  of  various  events — 
dashes,  distance  runs,  broad  jumps,  high  jumps,  shot- 
putting,  and  pole-vaults— so  there  were  numerous  ele- 
ments comprised  in  the  ordnance  problem.  For  Army 
Ordnance,  the  declaration  of  war  was  the  starter's 
pistol;  the  meeting  of  requirements  by  actual  de- 
liveries the  goal.  In  estimating  any  accomplishment, 
whether  it  be  the  time  in  which  a  sprinter  runs  a  hun- 
dred yards  or  a  horse  trots  a  mile,  the  altitude  reached 
by  an  aviator  or  the  speed  of  a  transatlantic  liner, 
it  is  necessary  to  take  some  accomplishment  along  the 
same  or  similar  lines  as  a  standard  of  comparison.  It 
is  generally  admitted  by  athletes,  for  example,  that 
for  a  man  to  run  a  hundred  yards  in  ten  seconds  is 
an  excellent  performance;    for  him  to  run  the  same 


ORDNANCE  225 

distance  in  nine  seconds  would  be  amazing.  If,  in 
view  of  this  generally  accepted  standard  of  what  con- 
stitutes a  sprinter's  utmost  exertion,  a  critic  con- 
demned a  sprinter  for  not  running  a  hundred  yards  in 
eight  seconds,  or  in  seven  seconds,  that  critic  would  be 
branded  by  all  intelligent  persons  as  lacking  in  knowl- 
edge and  judgment.  So,  in  criticising  the  degree  of 
success  attained  by  the  Ordnance  Department  during 
the  war,  it  would  be  well  for  the  critics  to  be  quite  cer- 
tain that  they  have  chosen  just  standards  of  compari- 
son, and  that  they  possess  a  sufficient  knowledge  of 
the  problems  involved  in  ordnance  production  to 
enable  them  to  recognize  a  record-breaking  perform- 
ance if  they  saw  one. 

Generally  speaking,  it  may  be  said  that  those 
phases  of  the  ordnance  programme  which  had  the 
shorter  time  limits  were  unqualifiedly  successful. 
There  was  never  a  time  when  the  production  of 
smokeless  powder  and  high  explosives  did  not  equal 
our  own  requirements  and  still  leave  us  with  a  surplus 
sufficient  to  provide  large  quantities  for  both  France 
and  England. 

During  the  nineteen  months  of  our  participation 
in  the  war  we  produced  over  2,500,000  rifles,  a  quantity 
greater  than  that  produced  during  the  same  period  by 
France  (1,400,000)  or  by  England  (1,970,000),  and  this 
notwithstanding  our  handicap  of  a  standing  start.  To 
use  a  fairer  method  of  comparison,  the  average  monthly 
production  of  France  during  July,  August,  and  Sep- 
tember, 1918,  was  40,500;  of  England,  112,821;  of  the 
United  States,  233,562.     In  other  words,  to  again  make 


2  26      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

use  of  the  athletic  simile,  not  only  did  America  cover  a 
greater  total  distance  duiing  the  same  period  of  time, 
but  when  the  race  was  called  off  by  the  signing  of  the 
Armistice  we  were  producing  rifles  at  a  rate  double 
that  of  England  and  five  times  that  of  France. 

Of  small-arms  ammunition  (for  pistols,  rifles,  and 
machine-guns)  there  were  produced  between  April  6, 
191 7,  and  November  11,  1918,  2,879,148,000  rounds,  a 
total  equivalent  to  three  cartridges  for  every  minute 
which  has  elapsed  since  the  beginning  of  the  Christian 
era !  True,  this  total  fell  slightly  below  that  of  Eng- 
land (3,486,127,000)  and  of  France  (2,983,675,000)  for 
the  same  period,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  those 
nations  had  developed  highly  efficient  manufacturing 
methods  as  the  result  of  the  experience  they  had  gained 
during  their  nearly  three  years  of  war  prior  to  our 
entry  into  the  conflict.  Notwithstanding  their  run- 
ning start,  before  the  Armistice  we  attained  a  speed 
in  the  manufacture  of  smaU-arms  ammunition  double 
that  of  France  and  10  per  cent  greater  than  England's. 

During  that  period  that  we  were  at  war  we  pro- 
duced 181,662  machine-guns,  a  total  slightly  greater 
than  that  of  England  (181,404)  and  slightly  less  than 
that  of  France  (229,238),  but  here  again  a  comparison 
of  total  production  is  hardly  a  fair  statement  of  rela- 
tive accomplishment,  for  in  machine-gun  manufacture 
an  enormous  length  of  time  is  required  to  build  fac- 
tories, to  equip  them  with  machine  tools,  to  design  the 
necessary  jigs,  fixtures,  dies,  millers,  profiles,  and  the 
innumerable  limit  gauges  for  testing  the  precision  of 
the  various  parts.     A  fairer  basis  of  comparison — the 


ORDNANCE  227 

average  monthly  rate  of  production  during  the  months 
immediately  preceding  the  signing  of  the  Armistice — 
shows  that  America  was  producing  27,270  machine- 
guns  and  automatic  rifles  a  month — more  than  twice 
as  many  as  France  and  nearly  three  times  as  many  as 
England. 

As  to  artillery  ammunition,  let  us  take  the  pro- 
duction of  shell  for  the  7  5 -mm.  guns.  Of  this  calibre 
we  had  produced  4,250,000  high-explosive  shell,  more 
than  500,000  gas-shell,  and  over  7,250,000  shrapnel 
when  the  Armistice  was  signed.  From  January  18, 
1918,  when  the  first  complete  American  division  entered 
the  line,  until  firing  ceased  ten  months  later,  our  gun- 
ners used  6,250,000  rounds  of  75-mm.  ammunition. 
Prior  to  the  x^rmistice  we  had  shipped  to  France  about 
8,500,000  shell  of  this  same  calibre.  Thus  it  will  be 
seen  that  though  American  gunners  admittedly  made 
use  of  French-made  ammunition  from  the  Franco- 
American  pool  (thereby  confirming  the  worst  suspicions 
of  the  army's  critics),  each  round  fired  was  made  good 
prior  to  the  signing  of  the  Armistice  with  t,;^}^  per  cent 
margin. 

Of  the  artillery  programme  proper,  it  is  difficult 
to  appraise  the  performance,  for  the  reason  that  the 
race  was  called  off  before  it  was  half  run.  It  will  be 
forever  difficult  to  establish  beyond  question  whether 
the  American  artillery  programme  at  the  time  of  the 
signing  of  the  Armistice  was  as  sufficiently  far  advanced 
as  could  be  reasonably  expected  under  the  circum- 
stances. Any  attempt  to  pass  on  Ordnance's  accom- 
plishment, or  lack  of  accomplishment,  in  this  respect 


2  28      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

must  in  justice  take  into  account  the  best  previous 
performance  along  these  lines.  Of  all  the  countries 
engaged  in  the  war  the  experience  of  England  affords 
the  closest  parallel  to  that  of  the  United  States  in 
respect  to  the  initial  stages  of  industrial  and  military 
preparation.  In  determining  a  standard  of  perform- 
ance in  the  equipping  with  artillery  of  a  hastily  raised 
army  by  a  peace-loving  nation,  permit  me  to  quote  a 
few  significant  sentences  from  a  statement  made  by 
the  British  Ministry  of  Munitions: 

"It  is  very  difficult  to  say  how  long  it  was  before 
the  British  Army  was  thoroughly  equipped  with  artil- 
lery and  ammunition.  The  ultimate  size  of  the  army 
aimed  at  was  continually  increased  during  the  first 
three  years  of  the  war,  so  that  the  ordnance  require- 
ments were  continually  increasing.  It  is  probably  true 
to  say  that  the  equipment  of  the  Army  as  planned 
in  the  early  summer  of  191 5  was  completed  by  Sep- 
tember, 1916.  As  a  result,  however,  of  the  battle  of 
Verdun  and  the  early  stages  of  the  battle  of  the 
Somme,  a  great  change  was  made  in  the  standard  of 
equipment  per  division  of  the  Army,  followed  by  fur- 
ther increases  in  September,  19 16.  The  Army  was  not 
completely  equipped  on  this  new  scale  until  spring, 
1918." 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  it  took  England  nearly 
four  years  to  completely  equip  her  army  with  artillery 
and  ammunition.  On  that  basis  we  had  two  years 
and  five  months  to  go  before  incomplete  equipment 
with  American-made  artillery  could  have  been  con- 
demned, with  justification,  as  poor  performance.     The 


ORDNANCE  229 

nineteen  months  which  the  war  lasted  after  America's 
entry  did  not  give  sufficient  time  for  our  industrial 
power  to  make  itself  fully  felt.  Even  so,  I  don't  sup- 
pose that  any  one,  save  perhaps  the  profiteers,  would 
wish  the  war  to  have  lasted  long  enough  for  us  to 
prove  that  we  could  produce  artillery  as  rapidly  as 
our  allies. 

It  should  be  kept  in  mind  that  proper  strategy 
demanded  an  ordnance  programme  designed  to  insure 
an  ultimate  overwhelming  and  continuous  rate  of  pro- 
duction rather  than  a  lesser  rate  of  production  at  an 
earlier  date.  What  I  wish  to  get  across  to  you  (par- 
don the  slang)  is  that  the  primary  object  of  Ordnance 
was  not  to  obtain  immediate  production  of  enough 
artillery  and  ammunition  to  equip  our  little  First  Con- 
tingent, but  to  obtain  a  rate  of  production  which  would 
provide  for  the  equipment  of  the  army  of  5,000,000 
men  which  it  had  been  decided  to  raise.  Now  it  is 
perfectly  ob\'ious  to  any  one  that  a  housewife  could 
buy  a  stove  and  bake  a  dozen  loaves  of  bread  in  far 
less  time  than  would  be  required  to  build  a  bakery  and 
bake  enough  bread  to  feed  an  entire  city.  But  the 
rate  of  production  from  the  housewife's  oven  would 
never  feed  the  city.  So  it  was  with  ordnance.  By 
the  sacrifice  of  far  more  important  considerations,  there 
is  no  doubt  that  enough  guns  could  have  been  pro- 
duced in  a  comparatively  short  time  to  equip  the  first 
few  divisions.  In  order  to  do  this,  time  was  required 
for  building  plants  capable  of  such  a  rate  of  produc- 
tion. We  had  to  obtain  designs  and  even,  in  certain 
cases,  to  discard  existing  designs,  in  order  to  get  manu- 


230      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

facturing  plants  on  a  basis  permitting  such  a  rate  of 
production.  It  would  have  been  madness  to  have  sac- 
rificed production  in  1920  to  force  a  quicker  but  far 
smaller  production  in  19 18.  The  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment was  not  directing  its  efforts  to  obtain  for  Ameri- 
can arms  an  immediate  but  isolated  success,  gratifying 
as  such  a  success  would  have  been  to  American  pride; 
instead  it  was  building  a  machine  which  would  make 
an  ultimate  and  sweeping  victory  absolutely  certain. 

No  branch  of  the  army  took  up  its  war-task  under 
such  discouraging  conditions  as  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment. It  had  97  officers;  it  needed  10,000.  But 
where  were  they  to  come  from?  It  was  and  is  impos- 
sible to  improvise  ordnance  experts,  like  those  of  pre- 
war times,  who  were  required  to  possess  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  all  phases  of  ordnance  work  from  design 
and  development  through  procurement,  production, 
and  inspection  to  the  supply  of  troops.  But  upon 
the  outbreak  of  hositilities  thousands  of  engineers, 
graduates  of  the  world's  most  famous  technical  in- 
stitutions and  many  of  them  with  wide  experience  in 
their  respective  branches  of  the  engineering  profession, 
offered  their  services  to  the  Ordnance  Department, 
and  it  is  very  largely  due  to  their  ability,  experience, 
and  devotion  that  the  solution  of  many  of  Ordnance's 
most  perplexing  problems  is  due.  The  industrial  field, 
too,  yielded  a  generous  contribution  of  its  best  ability. 
To  these  men  were  often  given  strange  tasks.  They 
were  called  upon  to  procure  materials  with  which  they 
were  unfamiliar  in  markets  where  no  readily  available 
supply  existed.  They  had  to  design  and  erect  com- 
plete manufacturing  plants  and  to  teach  manufactur- 


ORDNANCE  231 

ing  methods  which  they  themselves  often  had  first  to 
learn.  Time  after  time  they  were  ordered  to  manu- 
facture articles  of  which  they  had  never  so  much  as 
seen  a  specimen  before  they  entered  the  army.  A 
huge  personnel  had  to  be  organized  to  care  for  the 
inspection  of  this  enormous  volume  of  varied  material, 
to  prove  it  by  means  of  firing  tests  at  Aberdeen  and 
elsewhere,  and  to  develop  it  from  the  first  rough  model 
through  all  the  interminable  stages  to  the  point  of 
successful  quantity  production. 

The  advice,  wishes,  and  requirements  of  our  allies 
were  given  full  consideration,  often  at  a  sacrifice  of 
natural  national  pride.  On  their  advice  or  at  their 
formally  expressed  desire,  we  in  many  cases  undertook 
the  manufacture  of  components  instead  of  complete 
assembled  units:  powder  for  propelling  charges  and 
high  explosives  for  bursting  charges  of  ammunition, 
instead  of  assembled  shell  complete  in  smaller  quan- 
tity; black  or  rough-machined  forgings  for  cannon, 
projectiles  or  recuperators  in  place  of  the  corresponding 
finished  articles;  motors  and  structural  steel  work  for 
standardized  tanks  for  joint  use  in  lieu  of  a  smaller 
number  of  complete  units  for  the  use  of  our  armies 
alone.  We  jaelded  priority  on  raw  material  sorely 
needed  to  make  our  own  programme  a  success,  but 
even  more  desperately  needed  by  our  allies  to  stave 
off  defeat  until  we  should  arrive  in  force. 

Every  15  pounds  of  finished  smokeless  powder  re- 
quires 14  pounds  of  cotton  and  700  pounds  of  mixed 
acid  for  its  nitration,  so  we  made  the  gun-cotton  to 
the  extent  of  more  than  500,000,000  pounds  on  this 
side  of  the  water,  thus  saving  the  excess  tonnage  that 


232      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

would  have  been  required  for  the  shipment  of  the  raw 
materials.  A  similar  condition  obtained  with  regard 
to  high  explosives.  Guided  by  the  same  sound  prin- 
ciple, we  shipped  in  bulk  enough  pierced  shell  blanks 
to  keep  the  French  and  British  factories  going  to  the 
limit  of  their  capacity,  and  so  on  through  the  endless 
list  of  articles  or  components  required  for  our  common 
use.  For,  be  it  remembered,  it  was  not  our  war  alone. 
The  quality  of  our  product  is  attested  by  the 
almost  pathetic  eagerness  of  the  poilu  to  acquire  an 
American  rifle  with  its  beautifully  adjusted  sights,  its 
admirable  breech  mechanism,  and  its  rimless,  non- 
jamming  ammunition;  by  the  universally  acknowledged 
excellence  of  the  American  automatic  pistol;  by  the 
purchase  by  the  French  Government  of  550  155-mm. 
howitzers  built  in  America  from  French  designs;  by 
the  cabled  request  of  the  French  Government  for  a 
continuous  supply  of  3,000  Browning  machine-guns 
every  month  and  50,000,000  cartridges  for  them,  after 
witnessing  their  performance  under  battle  conditions; 
by  the  general  order  from  British  General  Headquarters 
directing  that  on  account  of  its  greater  uniformity,  and 
consequent  less  danger  to  the  troops  advancing  under 
its  protection,  only  American-made  powder  be  used  for 
artillery  barrages — all  these  are  tributes  to  American 
science,  American  engineering,  and  American  industry, 
as  exemplified  in  American  ordnance,  by  qualified 
judges  who  were  backing  their  opinions  with  their  lives. 

American  artillery  may  be  roughly  divided  into 
four  classes:  light,  medium,  heavy,  and  railway.    The 


ORDNANCE  233 

light  artillery  consists  of  two  t}pes:  the  little,  hard-hit- 
ting 3  7 -mm.  infantry-accompanying  cannon,  operated 
by  two  men,  primarily  designed  for  knocking  out  "pill- 
boxes" and  machine-gun  nests  and,  with  a  shortened 
barrel,  for  use  in  tanks,  and  the  75-mm.  field-gun,  an 
American  adaptation  of  the  famous  French  soixante- 
quinzc,  which,  according  to  the  admission  of  the  French 
themselves,  it  in  several  respects  excelled.  Three  types 
of  weapons  are  included  in  the  medium-calibre  class: 
the  4.7-inch  field-gun,  which  we  had  adopted  and  had 
manufactured  in  small  quantities  prior  to  our  entrance 
into  the  war;  the  155-mm.  G.  P.  F.  {Grand  Puissance 
Filloiix),  really  a  big  brother  of  the  ''seventy-five," 
with  correspondingly  increased  power  and  range,  de- 
signed for  interdicting  crossroads  and  harassing  the 
enemy's  middle  areas,  and  the  155-mm.  howitzer,  which 
with  its  plunging  fire  is  admirably  adapted  for  trench 
and  dugout  demolition.  In  mobile  hea\y  artillery  we 
have  the  8-inch  and  9.2-inch  howitzers,  likewise  de- 
signed primarily  for  demolition  purposes.  And,  finally, 
the  great  8,  10,  12,  14,  and  16  inch  pieces — guns,  howit- 
zers, and  mortars — mounted  on  and  fired  from  specially 
designed  railway-trucks  suited  to  the  French  road-beds 
— for  incessant  pounding  of  the  depots,  dumps,  head- 
quarters, and  railways  far  behind  the  enemy's  lines. 
In  addition  to  the  above  there  are,  of  course,  the  vari- 
ous types  of  antiaircraft  artillery,  mainly  of  75-mm. 
calibre,  and  the  trench-mortars,  ranging  in  size  from 
the  3-inch  Stokes,  light  enough  to  go  over  the  top 
with  the  first  wave  of  an  attack  and  simple  enough  to 
be  fired  when  supported  only  b}-  the  knees  of  a  squat- 


234      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

ting  soldier,  up  to  the  240-mni.  trench-mortar  of  posi- 
tion, whose  great  shell  can  blow  the  stoutest  concrete 
fortification  to  smithereens.  We  also  had  in  use  at 
various  times  small  numbers  of  miscellaneous  calibres 
and  tj'pes,  but,  as  the  result  of  the  policy  of  reducing 
the  number  of  types  in  order  to  simplify  the  problem 
of  ammunition  supply,  our  artillery  had  become  fairly 
well  standardized  by  the  closing  months  of  the  war. 

Years  ago — though  not  nearly  so  long  ago  as  it 
seems — when  artillery  was  still  hauled  into  position  by 
sweating  gun-teams,  a  veteran  ordnance  officer,  ad- 
dressing a  scientific  society,  told  his  hearers  that  the 
weight  of  artillery  was  governed  by  the  limited  power 
of  the  horse.  As  a  horse  has  a  sustained  pulling  power 
of  only  650  pounds,  he  explained,  it  was  obvious  that 
a  6-horse  gun-team  could  not  pull  a  gun  and  limber 
weighing  more  than  3,900  pounds.  "If  Divine  Provi- 
dence had  given  the  horse  the  speed  of  the  deer  and 
the  power  of  an  elephant,"  he  added,  "we  might  have 
had  a  far  wider  and  more  effective  range  for  our  mobile 
artillery."  Could  that  ofiicer  have  looked  a  few  years 
into  the  future  he  would  have  been  astonished  to  see 
that,  thanks  largely  to  the  genius  of  a  Calif ornian 
named  Holt,  there  would  be  substituted  for  the  horse  a 
curious  contrivance  known  as  the  caterpillar  tractor, 
which  possesses  many  times  the  power  of  an  elephant. 
Though  the  tractor  cannot  be  claimed,  by  any  stretch  of 
the  imagination,  to  have  the  speed  of  a  deer,  it  never- 
theless has  sufficient  speed  to  keep  pace  with  the  infan- 
try, or,  indeed,  should  it  become  necessary,  with  cav- 
alry.   Few  people  appear  to  realize  how  enormous  were 


ORDNANCE  235 

the  savings  in  men,  animals,  feed,  railway  facilities,  and 
ocean  tonnage  effected  by  the  motorization  of  our  ar- 
tillery. The  motorization  of  one  155-mm.  howitzer 
regiment  saved  1,440  horses.  One  tractor  for  this 
howitzer  is  the  equivalent  of  sixteen  heavy  draft-horses 
and  three  riding-horses,  yet  it  is  so  compact  that  it 
occupies  in  packing  a  space  of  but  360  cubic  feet,  and 
can  be  operated  by  two  men.  Tractors  are  not  onl}' 
easier  to  conceal  from  enemy  observation  than  horses, 
but  a  shell-burst  which  would  kill  every  horse  in  a 
batter}^  would  leave  an  armored  tractor  uninjured. 
Not  long  ago,  at  the  Aberdeen  Proving- Ground,  one 
of  these  tractors,  on  which  was  mounted  an  8-inch 
howitzer,  sent  through  a  dense  wood,  ran  squarely  into 
a  live  locust-tree  which  was  seventeen  inches  thick  at 
the  base.  Before  the  onslaught  of  the  tractor  the  tree 
went  down  as  though  it  were  made  of  cardboard,  where- 
upon the  amazing  machine  crawled  over  the  fallen 
trunk,  slid  into  and  clambered  out  of  a  ravine,  emerged 
from  the  wood  and  took  up  its  firing  position — all  in 
scarcely  more  time  than  it  takes  to  tell  of  it.  Before 
the  war  ended  virtually  every  piece  of  American  me- 
dium and  hea\y  artillery  was  either  tractor-mounted 
or  tractor-drawn,  and  we  were  on  the  road  toward 
motorizing  the  field-artillery — the  "seventy-fives" — as 
well. 

But,  though  the  General  StafT  of  the  A.  E.  F.  de- 
manded mobility  for  the  artillery,  it  also  demanded 
increased  weight  and  range.  To  meet  this  requirement 
there  were  de\'ised  various  t}pes  of  railway-artiller}', 
ranging  in  size  from  7  to  16   inch,  thereby  making 


236      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

available  for  use  on  the  battle-front  numerous  guns 
from  our  seacoast  fortifications  which  could  not  have 
been  used  otherwise.  Early  in  the  war  the  Army  bor- 
rowed from  the  Navy  a  number  of  7 -inch  naval  rifles 
on  pedestal  mounts,  for  which  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment provided  specially  designed  gun-cars,  thus  af- 
fording a  powerful  and  yet  mobile  form  of  defense  for 
our  coasts  in  the  event  of  submarine  attack.  The 
next  performance  worthy  of  note  was  the  mounting 
on  railway-cars  of  ninety-six  8-inch  guns  taken  from 
\'arious  seacoast  fortifications.  Both  of  the  above 
types  of  gun,  as  well  as  the  12-inch  mortars,  were 
mounted  on  the  so-called  Barbette  carriage,  which 
permits  of  all-round  fire  at  any  desired  elevation.  The 
lo-inch  seacoast  rifle  and  all  sizes  above  it  were 
mounted  on  the  Batignolles  type  of  carriage,  which 
depends  primarily  on  the  track  arrangement  for  its 
direction  of  fire.  Both  the  Barbette  and  Batignolles 
mounts  had,  after  the  initial  setting,  all  the  character- 
istics of  fixed  emplacements,  but  with  the  added  advan- 
tage of  being  able  to  advance  or  retire  with  a  minimum 
loss  of  time.  A  third  type  of  railway-mount,  which 
was  used  very  successfully  by  the  French  and  which 
was  being  adapted  for  certain  of  our  10,  12,  and  14  inch 
guns  when  the  war  ended,  was  the  Schneider,  or  sliding 
type  of  mount.  Though  this  mount  also  depends  upon 
the  track  arrangement  for  its  direction  of  fire,  it  has 
none  of  the  features  of  a  fixed  emplacement,  the  force 
of  the  recoil  being  taken  up  by  permitting  the  entire 
mount  to  slide  back  on  the  track  during  the  recoil  of 
the  gun.    The  ''Chilean  project,"  as  it  was  known,  con- 


ORDNANCE  237 

sisted  in  mounting  six  12-inch  guns,  which  had  been 
manufactured  in  the  United  States  for  Chile  and  were 
on  the  point  of  delivery  when  they  were  comman- 
deered by  our  government,  on  special  sliding  mounts 
designed  by  the  Ordnance  Department.  Still  another 
venture  was  the  mounting  for  railway  use  of  a  number 
of  14-inch  guns  loaned  by  the  Navy  to  the  War  De- 
partment. But  the  most  ambitious  project  under- 
taken by  Ordnance  in  connection  with  railway-artillery 
was  the  production  of  the  huge  16-inch  howitzer,  to 
manufacture  sixty-two  of  which  an  entirely  new  shop 
had  to  be  erected  by  the  Midvale  Steel  Company. 
This,  the  heaviest  railway-mount  of  American  design, 
weighs,  with  its  gun,  nearly  a  million  pounds.  The 
design  and  production  of  a  device  which  would  absorb 
its  recoil  of  seven  million  pounds  wsls  in  itself  no  incon- 
siderable engineering  problem.  Each  of  these  monster 
railway-cannon  has  its  own  train,  consisting  of  standard 
and  narrow-gauge  ammunition-cars,  as  well  as  cars  for 
tools,  for  spare  parts,  for  repair  work,  and  for  the  crews. 
Huge  as  they  are,  rivalling  in  range  and  power  any- 
thing which  the  Germans  had  at  Metz  or  the  British  at 
Gibraltar,  they  are  extremely  mobile,  any  one  of  them 
being  able  to  drop  its  load  of  high  explosive  far  behind 
the  enemy's  lines,  "pull  stakes,"  and  be  miles  away 
before  the  enemy  could  get  its  range. 

Speaking  of  the  range  of  artillery,  some  truly 
amazing  results  in  this  held  were  achieved  by  Major 
Forest  Ray  Moulton,  one  of  America's  foremost  math- 
ematicians, who  was  professor  of  astronomy  in  the 
Universit}'  of  Chicago  before  he  was  given  a  commis- 


238      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

sion  in  the  Engineering  Di\dsion  of  Ordnance  and 
turned  his  knowledge  of  ballistics  to  military  account. 
One  usually  thinks  of  a  professor  of  astronomy  as  a 
highly  impractical  person  whose  mind  is  absorbed  in 
comets,  meteors,  and  stars,  yet  no  individual  in  the 
armies  of  the  United  States  did  as  much  as  Doctor 
Moulton  toward  perfecting  devices  for  killing  Germans 
at  long  range.  Here  is  a  sample  of  his  achievements. 
As  the  result  of  a  series  of  abstruse  calculations  he 
made  a  change  in  the  shape  of  the  copper  driving-band 
on  the  6-inch  shell,  whereby,  without  adding  to  the 
powder  charge  attd  with  no  modificatioji  whatever  in 
the  gun,  he  increased  its  range  two  and  a  half  miles. 
What  is  even  more  remarkable  and  important,  he  so 
reduced  the  variation  between  successive  shots  that  a 
given  number  of  shell  will  fall  into  one-eighth  the  area 
formerly  covered  by  their  dispersion.  Had  the  war 
continued  a  year  or  so  longer,  there  is  no  saying  where 
Doctor  Moulton's  ballistic  discoveries  would  have  led. 
It  was  evidently  of  one  of  the  shell  designed  by  him 
that  the  negro  soldier  remarked: 

"Ah  could  staht  runnin'  at  brekfus'-time  an'  that 
theah  shell  'ud  git  me  jes'  when  Ah  got  home  foah 
suppah." 

Whereupon  his  companion  exclaimed  scornfully: 
"All  one  of  dem  shells  wants  is  jes'  yo'  address, 
niggah — jes'  yo'  address." 

No  phase  of  the  Ordnance  Department's  work 
during  the  war  came  in  for  such  severe  criticism  as  the 
adoption  and  production  of  machine-guns.    Now  it  so 


ORDNANCE  239 

happens  that  I  am  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  de- 
tails of  the  long  and  bitter  controversy  which  began 
with  the  original  rejection  by  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment of  the  Lewis  gun  and  which  ended  with  the 
eventual  adoption  of  the  Browning.  Many  of  the  at- 
tacks made  on  the  War  Department  by  the  supporters 
of  Colonel  Lewis,  as  well  as  in  the  editorial  columns 
of  the  newspapers,  were  not  justified  by  the  facts  and 
showed  an  incomplete  knowledge  of  the  circumstances, 
yet,  as  an  impartial  observer  with  some  inside  knowl- 
edge of  the  situation,  I  freely  admit  that  for  certain 
of  the  criticisms  there  was  ample  justification.  Let 
me  remind  you,  moreover,  that  the  Lewis  being  con- 
siderably heavier  than  the  Browning  machine-rifle  and 
much  lighter  than  the  Browning  machine-gun,  could 
not  satisfactorily  have  taken  the  place  of  either.  With 
which  passing  comment  we  will  let  the  machine-gun 
controversy  rest. 

Machine-guns  of  the  so-called  heavy  type  had  been 
developed  to  a  serviceable  stage  at  the  time  of  the 
Spanish-American  War,  but  neither  then  nor  in  subse- 
quent conflicts  did  they  receive  anything  like  the 
attention  which  they  attracted  immediately  after  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  in  Europe.  The  Germans  had 
apparently  realized  better  than  any  one  else  the  value 
of  machine-guns  in  the  kind  of  fighting  which  they 
expected  to  be  engaged  in,  having  had,  it  is  reported, 
50,000  machine-guns  when  hostilities  opened.  Amer- 
ican appreciation  of  the  role  destined  to  be  played 
in  warfare  by  machine-guns  is  best  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that,  when  we  entered   the  war,   our   tables  of 


240      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

organization  gave  to  each  regiment  four  machine- 
guns! 

When  war  was  declared  there  were  on  hand  in 
this  country  approximately  670  Benet-Mercie  machine- 
rifles,  285  Maxim  machine-guns,  and  350  Lewis  guns 
chambered  for  British  ammunition.  The  machine-gun 
manufacturing  facilities  in  the  United  States  were  also 
more  limited  than  were  the  facilities  for  rifle  manufac- 
ture, by  reason  of  the  fact  that  England  and  France 
had  depended  on  their  domestic  resources  to  supply 
the  bulk  of  their  machine-guns.  As  a  result  there  were 
only  two  plants  in  the  United  States  which  were  actu- 
ally producing  machine-guns  in  quantity  when  hostili- 
ties began.  Six  days  after  our  entry  into  the  war  the 
War  Department  ordered  1,300  Lewis  guns  (which 
order  was  subsequently  increased)  and,  in  June,  2,500 
Colt  guns,  which  were  to  be  used  for  training  purposes. 
The  first  division  to  be  sent  abroad  was  necessarily 
armed  with  the  all-but-obsolete  Benet-Mercie  machine- 
rifle,  but  upon  its  arrival  in  France  the  French  Gov- 
ernment offered  to  equip  the  division  with  Hotchkiss 
machine-guns  and  Chauchat  machine-rifles — the  same 
automatic  arms  which  the  French  had  been  using  for 
three  years.  The  offer  was  thankfully  accepted,  not 
only  for  the  first  division  but  for  a  number  of  succeed- 
ing divisions,  thus  insuring  a  supply  of  automatic 
weapons  for  our  troops  until  we  were  in  a  position  to 
supply  them  ourselves. 

The  result  of  a  series  of  machine-gun  tests  held  by 
a  board  appointed  by  the  Secretary  of  War  in  May, 
191 7,  proved  conclusively  that  the  gun  invented  by 


ORDNANCE  241 

John  M.  Browning,  a  Utah  gunsmith  who  already  pos- 
sessed a  wide  reputation  as  an  inventor  of  automatic 
weapons,  was  the  best  type  of  heavy  machine-gun 
known  to  the  board,  and  that  the  light  automatic  rifle, 
also  an  invention  of  Browning,  was  likewise  the  most 
efficient  weapon  of  its  type.  The  Lewis  and  the  Vick- 
ers,  both  of  which  had  been  extensively  used  by  the 
British  since  the  opening  days  of  the  war,  were  also 
favorably  reported  upon  and  it  was  recommended  that 
their  manufacture  be  continued.  Acting  on  the  recom- 
mendation of  the  board,  the  Ordnance  Department 
immediately  increased  its  orders  for  Lewis  guns,  placed 
orders  with  the  Colt's  Patent  Fire  Arms  Manufacturing 
Company  for  Browning  machine-rifles  and  machine- 
guns,  and  began  the  development  of  large  manufactur- 
ing facilities  for  the  last-named  types  in  order  that 
the  quantities  required  could  be  produced  within  the 
time  specified.  Although  the  Colt  Company  was  the 
owner  of  an  exclusive  right  to  build  machine-guns  and 
automatic  rifles  under  the  Browning  patents,  the  Ord- 
nance Department  early  recognized  that  no  single 
plant  could  hope  to  produce  a  sufficient  number  of 
these  weapons  to  meet  the  constantly  increasing  re- 
quirements of  our  armies.  Arrangements  were  there- 
fore made  with  the  Colt  Company  and  with  the  in- 
ventor, Mr.  Browning,  for  the  surrender  of  their  ex- 
clusive rights,  the  United  States  being  granted  author- 
ity to  manufacture  these  weapons  wherever  it  saw  fit 
during  the  period  of  the  war.  As  a  result  of  this  ener- 
getic, action,  by  the  early  part  of  191S  the  Savage 
Arms  Company  at  Utica,  New  York,  was  producing 


242      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

Lems  guns  of  the  flexible  type  for  use  on  aircraft  (the 
large  orders  for  Lewis  ground  guns  having  been  di- 
verted to  aircraft  use  upon  the  cabled  recommendation 
of  General  Pershing);  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corj^ora- 
tion  at  New  Haven  was  manufacturing  large  quantities 
of  Marlin  Aircraft  machine-guns  of  the  synchronized 
type;  the  Colt's  Company  was  building  Vickers  ma- 
chine-guns of  the  heavy  mobile  type,  while  various 
factories  selected  by  the  Ordnance  Department  be- 
cause of  their  facilities  were  energetically  tooling  up 
for  the  immense  production  of  Browning  machine- 
guns  and  automatic  rifles  which  later  followed.  Early 
in  March,  191 8,  the  Winchester  Repeating  Arms  Com- 
pany, to  whom,  as  the  result  of  the  arrangement 
already  referred  to,  the  Browning  plans  and  specifica- 
tions had  been  turned  over,  produced  the  first  Browning 
rifles,  and  two  months  later  the  New  England  Westing- 
house  Company  turned  out  the  first  Browning  machine- 
guns.  When  the  Armistice  was  signed,  the  American 
Expeditionary  Forces  had  been  equipped  with  41,348 
Browning  heavy  machine-guns  and  48,082  Browning 
rifles. 

As  the  Marlin  Aircraft  machine-gun  was  available 
and  was  giving  a  considerable  degree  of  satisfaction, 
no  particular  effort  was  made  to  push  the  development 
of  the  Browning  Aircraft  machine-gun,  as  it  was  feared 
that  to  do  so  might  interfere  with  the  production  of 
the  Browning  machine-gun  for  ground  use.  Only  a 
few  hundred  Browning  Aircraft  guns  had,  therefore, 
been  produced  up  to  the  time  of  the  Armistice.  These 
had,  however,  been  satisfactorily  synchronized  so  as  to 


Pholniraph  hy  Sknal  Corps.  U.  S.  A. 

JOHX  M.  BROWXIXC;,  THE  IXVEXTOR  OF  THE  PISTOL,  RIELE.  AXD  MACHIXE  ClUX 

WHICH  BEARS  HIS  NAME. 

Mr.  Brownint;  is  holdint;  the  automatic  rille  which  he  invented. 


Pliolonraph  by  Signal  Cnrp<.  l' .  S.  A. 

THE   HROWXIXC.   HE\W   MAt'HIXE  lil-X. 
This,  the  deadliest  weapon  of  the  war.  can  fire  at  the  rate  of  i.ooo  shots  a  minute. 


A   RULE   (;Rf:.\AI)IKk. 
His  rifle  is  fitted  with  ;i  "tromblon"  for  fn'mg  rifle-grenades. 


ORDNANCE  243 

fire  through  the  airplane  propellers,  and  had  been 
speeded  up  to  the  amazing  rate  of  fire  of  1,300  shots  per 
minute. 

Upon  their  arrival  in  Europe  the  two  Browning 
weapons  created  a  marked  sensation  both  in  the  armies 
of  the  Allies  and  in  our  own  forces.  Not  only  were 
they  exquisite  examples  of  the  gunsmith's  art  but  they 
could  pour  lead  into  the  enemy  at  an  unheard-of  rate, 
they  were  to  all  intents  and  purposes  foolproof,  and 
they  proved  themselves  capable  of  standing  up  under 
the  most  trying  conditions.  The  Browning  automatic 
rifle  in  particular,  as  beautifully  finished  and  balanced 
as  a  trap-shooter's  double-barrel,  formed  a  striking 
contrast  to  the  clumsy  French  Chauchat,  which  looked 
as  though  it  had  been  made  by  a  \dllage  blacksmith. 
During  the  summer  of  1918  our  government  was  ap- 
proached by  representatives  of  England,  France,  and 
Belgium  with  inquiries  as  to  the  possibility  of  sufficient 
Brownings  being  produced  to  supply  their  armies  as 
well  as  our  own. 

The  79th  was  the  first  division  to  enter  the  line 
equipped  with  Browning  automatic  rifles  and  machine- 
guns.  In  view  of  the  various  criticisms  of  these  weap- 
ons which  have  appeared  from  time  to  time  in  the 
American  press,  it  seems  worth  while  to  quote  from 
the  report  of  the  Ordnance  Machine-Gun  Ofiicer  of 
that  division: 

"The  guns  went  into  the  front  line  for  the  first 
time  in  the  night  of  September  13th.  The  sector  was 
quiet  and  the  guns  were  practically  not  used  at  all 
until  the  advance,  starting  September  26th.     In  the 


244      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

action  which  followed,  the  guns  were  used  on  several 
occasions  for  overhead  fire,  one  compan}^  firing  10,000 
rounds  per  gun  into  a  wood  in  which  there  were  enemy 
machine-gun  nests,  at  a  range  of  2,000  metres.  Al- 
though the  conditions  were  extremely  unfavorable  for 
machine-guns  on  account  of  rain  and  mud,  the  guns 
performed  well.  Machine-gun  officers  reported  that 
during  the  engagement  the  guns  came  up  to  the  fullest 
expectations,  and  even  though  covered  with  rust  and 
using  muddy  ammunition,  they  functioned  whenever 
called  upon  to  do  so." 

The  design  and  adoption  of  the  Browning  gun  not 
only  gave  our  armies  the  most  efficient  and  dependable 
weapon  of  its  kind  in  the  world,  but  it  saved  the  Ameri- 
can taxpayer  $75,000,000.  This  figure  is  based  on  the 
difference  in  cost  to  the  government  of  the  Browning 
and  its  nearest  equivalent,  the  Vickers — the  latter  at 
a  price  representing  its  cost  after  having  been  in  war 
production  for  three  years.  The  design  and  adoption 
of  the  Browning  automatic  rifle  gave  us  far  and  away 
the  best  weapon  of  that  type  possessed  by  any  army, 
and  it  saved  the  government  nearly  $13,000,000 — not 
a  very  large  figure,  it  is  true,  compared  with  war  ex- 
penditures, but  nevertheless  worth  saving. 

When  the  war  ended  we  had  on  hand  52,000 
Browning  automatic  rifles  and  29,000  Chauchats — a 
total  sufficient  to  arm  an  army  of  approximately 
3,500,000  men.  On  the  same  date  there  were  com- 
pleted 3,340  Hotchkiss,  9,337  Vickers,  and  42,050 
Browning  guns,  thus  giving  us  enough  heavy  machine- 
guns  to  equip  over  200  divisions,  or  an  army  of  approx- 


ORDNANCE  245 

imately  7,000,000  men.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that, 
no  matter  what  the  future  has  in  store  for  us,  it  will 
be  a  long  time  before  we  will  have  occasion  to  worry 
about  a  shortage  in  machine-guns. 

Though  less  novel  and,  therefore,  less  interesting 
than  certain  other  products  of  Ordnance,  there  were 
six  items,  all  produced  in  stupendous  quantities,  which 
rendered  greater  service  than  all  the  big  guns,  tanks, 
and  airplanes  put  together  in  nailing  down  the  coffin- 
lid  on  Germany's  dream  of  world  domination.  I  refer 
to  rifles,  pistols,  revolvers,  bayonets,  helmets,  and 
small-arms  ammunition.  They,  with  the  gas-respira- 
tor, the  water-bottle,  the  cartridge-belt,  and  the  pack, 
constituted  the  equipment  of  the  fighting  Yank.  They 
were  the  infantryman's  tools  of  trade. 

When  the  news  of  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania 
reached  Paris,  I  heard  the  then  American  Ambas- 
sador to  France  assert,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  William 
Jennings  Bryan,  whose  appointee  he  was,  that  were 
the  United  States  to  enter  the  war,  a  million  men 
would  spring  to  arms  overnight. 

'I'll  admit,  Mr.  Ambassador,"  said  a  sceptical 
Hstener,  "that  we  might  get  the  million  men.  But 
where  would  we  get  the  arms?" 

"We'd  stamp  'em  out,  sir,"  replied  the  diplomat. 
"We'd  stamp  'em  out  the  way  we  stamp  out  tin  plates." 

But,  unfortunately,  the  matter  of  supplying  weap- 
ons for  our  fighting  forces  was  very  far  from  being  as 
simple  as  the  ambassador  seemed  to  think,  for  the 
modern  high-power  service  rifle  is  a  delicately  adjusted 


246      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

and  highly  finished  piece  of  mechanism,  to  manufac- 
tm-e  which  requires  the  finest  quality  of  materials  and 
the  highest  grade  of  expert  workmanship.  So,  though 
we  did  not  realize  the  dream  of  the  ambassador  by  pro- 
ducing arms  for  a  million  men  overnight,  American 
Ordnance  performed  a  feat  almost  as  amazing  by  pro- 
ducing enough  rifles  to  equip  an  army  of  seven  million 
men  in  less  than  fifteen  months. 

Some  years  before  our  entry  into  the  war  a  parsi- 
monious Congress  reduced  the  appropriations  for  the 
manufacture  of  small  arms  and  small-arms  ammunition 
to  such  an  extent  that  it  was  found  necessary  to  shut 
down  the  rifle-plant  at  the  Rock  Island  Arsenal  and  to 
greatly  reduce  the  output  of  rifles  at  the  Springfield 
Arniory  and  of  cartridges  at  the  Frankford  Arsenal. 
This  resulted,  as  might  have  been  foreseen,  in  the  dis- 
persion of  the  large  force  of  highly  skifled  workmen 
who  had  been  in  government  employ,  most  of  them 
seeking  occupation  with  private  concerns  or  turning  to 
other  vocations.  When,  therefore,  our  entry  into  the 
Great  War  made  it  necessary  to  take  up  the  manufac- 
ture of  small  arms  and  ammunition  on  an  unprece- 
dented scale,  the  War  Department  was  dismayed  to 
find  that  it  did  not  have  nearly  enough  workmen,  and 
that,  owing  to  the  enormous  wages  which  were  then 
being  paid  in  other  industries,  it  could  not  get  them. 
Thus  it  became  necessary,  in  order  to  obtain  an  imme- 
diate and  adequate  supply  of  weapons  for  the  great 
new  armies  which  we  were  raising,  to  enlist  the  co- 
operation of  private  manufacturers. 

The  three  leading  manufacturers  of  small  arms  in 


ORDNANCE  247 

this  country — the  Winchester  Repeating  Fire  Arms 
Company  of  New  Haven,  Conn.,  the  Remington  Arms- 
Union  Metallic  Cartridge  Company  of  Ilion,  N.  Y., 
and  the  Remington  Arms  Company  of  Eddystone,  Pa. 
— were  devoting  themselves  at  this  time  to  the  manu- 
facture of  the  British  .303  rifle,  the  production  of 
which,  however,  due  to  the  decrease  in  the  require- 
ments of  the  British  Government,  was  gradually  slow- 
ing down.  But,  though  these  plants  had  every  facility 
for  turning  out  in  large  quantities  the  British  .303 
Enfield,  it  would  have  required  many  months  for  them 
to  alter  their  tools  and  machinery  for  the  manufacture 
of  the  .30-calibre  Springfield,  which  was  the  standard 
arm  of  the  American  service.  The  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment found  itself  confronted,  therefore,  by  three  alter- 
natives. It  could  change  the  equipment  of  these 
plants  so  as  to  permit  of  the  manufacture  of  Spring- 
field rifles — a  proceeding  which  would  have  involved  a 
delay  of  several  months;  it  could  adopt  the  British 
Enfield,  which  would  also  have  necessitated  the  adop- 
tion of  another  calibre  of  ammunition — an  unthinkable 
thing  in  time  of  war;  or  it  could  utilize  the  facilities  of 
these  three  great  plants  by  modif>'ing  the  British  rifle 
so  that  it  would  take  American  ammunition.  The  lat- 
ter course  was  decided  on. 

The  modification  consisted  in  changing  the  mag- 
azine, chamber,  and  bore  of  the  Enfield  rifle  so  that  it 
would  take  the  U.  S.  service  .30-calibre  rimless  cartridge 
instead  of  the  British  .303  rim  cartridge.  So  rapidly 
were  the  plans  worked  out,  the  drawings  and  specifica- 
tions produced,  and  sample  rifles  submitted  and  tested, 


248      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

that  within  less  than  eight  weeks  after  the  declaration 
of  war  orders  were  given  to  Winchester  and  the  two 
Remington  concerns  for  a  million  '^ modified  Enfields," 
as  the  new  weapons  were  called.  Putting  aside  the 
keen  trade  rivalry  which  had  formerly  existed,  the 
three  plants  virtually  operated  as  one  mammoth  rifle 
factory,  so  that  when  one  shop  found  itself  short  of 
parts  it  was  promptly  supplied  from  another  where 
there  was  a  surplus.  The  combined  factories  had  so 
fully  gotten  into  their  stride  by  the  fall  of  1918  that, 
when  the  Armistice  was  signed,  they  were  turning  out 
approximately  10,000  rifles  a  day,  this  being  in  addition, 
remember,  to  the  spare  parts  which  were  being  manu- 
factured at  all  three  plants  as  well  as  in  the  govern- 
ment establishments  at  Rock  Island  and  Springfield. 
The  records  show  that  more  than  2,500,000  rifles  had 
been  accepted  by  November  9,  1918.  Add  to  this  the 
600,000  Springfields  and  the  160,000  Krag-Jorgensens 
which  we  had  on  hand  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  the 
280,000  rifles  which  had  been  manufactured  for  Russia 
but  which  were  taken  over  by  the  United  States,  and 
the  20,000  Ross  rifles  purchased  from  Canada,  and  it 
wiU  be  seen  that  we  had  a  total  of  more  than  3,500,000 
rifles.  As  only  about  one-half  of  the  troops  in  an 
American  division  carry  rifles,  we  had,  therefore, 
enough  weapons  to  equip  an  army  of  7,000,000  men. 

In  spite  of  the  endless  complications  due  to  the 
use  by  our  forces  during  the  early  days  of  the  war  of 
French  machine-guns  and  automatic  rifles  of  a  calibre 
different  from  our  own,  and  to  the  insistent  demands 
of  the  Air  Service  for  special  types  of  cartridges — 


ORDNANCE  249 

tracer,  armor-piercing,  and  incendiary — there  was  never 
a  time  when  we  did  not  have  enough  small-arms  am- 
munition to  supply  our  forces  in  the  field.  I  might 
mention  in  this  connection  that  one  of  the  most  per- 
plexing problems  which  had  to  be  solved  by  Ordnance 
was  the  manufacture  of  ammunition  which  would 
function  equally  well  in  two  rifles — the  Springfield  and 
the  Enfield — and  in  seven  different  types  of  machine- 
gun — the  Benet-Mercie,  the  Lewis,  the  Vickers,  the 
Colt,  the  Marlin,  and  the  light  and  heavy  Brownings. 
In  these  machine-guns  the  firing-pin  points,  or  strikers, 
are  different  in  shape  and  size  and  function  differently, 
each  giving  a  different  weight  of  blow  on  the  primers 
of  the  cartridge,  yet,  notwithstanding  this  handicap, 
the  success  of  the  American  ammunition  in  this  respect 
was  remarkable.  The  daily  average  of  small-arms 
ammunition  manufactured  in  the  United  States  reached 
the  enormous  total  of  14,900,000  completed  rounds — 
a  production  equal  to  that  of  England  and  France  put 
together.  The  total  number  of  cartridges  of  all  classes 
produced  up  to  the  end  of  the  war  was  3,500,000,000; 
enough,  if  placed  tip  to  primer,  to  put  a  girdle  of  brass 
and  steel  around  the  globe. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  the  Colt  automatic 
pistol,  of  .45  calibre,  was  the  standard  arm  of  the 
American  Army.  This  pistol  was  manufactured  by 
Colt's  at  Hartford,  Conn.,  and  by  the  government  at 
the  Springfield  Armory.  The  Ordnance  Department 
quickly  realized,  however,  that  even  the  combined 
capacity  of  these  two  plants  would  prove  wholly  in- 
adequate to  meet  the  demands  of  the  new  armies, 


250      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

whereupon  it  obtained  permission  from  the  War  De- 
partment to  supplement  the  supply  of  automatics 
with  arms  of  other  types,  particularly  Colt  and  Smith 
&  Wesson  .45-calibre  revolvers — the  famous  "six 
shooters"  of  the  plains.  These  revolvers  did  not  take 
the  rimless,  or  cannelured-head,  cartridge  used  in  the 
pistols,  but  this  difficulty  was  overcome  by  means  of 
a  loading-clip,  which  had  the  additional  advantage  of 
enabling  them  to  be  loaded  almost  as  quickly  as  an 
automatic.  The  revolver,  which  is  somewhat  less 
accurate  and  less  powerful  than  the  pistol,  and  which 
is  considerably  more  tiring  for  the  user,  was  adopted 
as  an  emergency  measure  only,  due  to  the  imperative 
necessity  of  supplying  the  troops.  The  demands  of 
the  A.  E.  F.  increased  so  rapidly,  however,  that  in 
the  summer  of  19 18  contracts  were  let  to  eight  other 
firms  possessing  equipment  which  could  be  converted 
to  the  manufacture  of  pistols  and  revolvers.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that  among  the  concerns  which 
turned  from  the  manufacture  of  essentially  peace-time 
devices  to  the  production  of  implements  for  killing  the 
Hun  were  the  Burroughs  Adding  Machine  Company 
and  the  National  Cash  Register  Company.  At  the 
signing  of  the  Armistice,  there  had  been  produced  a 
grand  total  of  375,000  pistols  and  268,000  revolvers, 
and  the  rate  of  production  was  rapidly  increasing, 
thereby  bringing  us  within  sight  of  the  day  when,  in 
accordance  with  the  plans  of  the  General  Staff,  it  would 
be  possible  to  arm  every  American  soldier  with  that 
characteristically   American   weapon,    the   ''shooting- 


ORDNANCE  251 

Another  innovation  introduced  by  the  Great  War 
was  the  steel  helmet,  which,  barring  a  few  European 
heavy  cavalry  regiments,  had  not  been  used  by  any 
civilized  army  since  Cromwell's  time.  The  British 
helmet  was  originally  adopted  by  our  forces  as  a  tem- 
porary expedient,  in  order  to  gain  time  until  experi- 
mepts  would  show  whether  it  was  possible  to  produce 
a  better  one.  After  a  lengthy  series  of  tests,  however, 
it  was  decided  to  retain  the  British  model,  manufac- 
tured from  steel  with  a  considerable  manganese  alloy, 
rolled  by  an  American  process.  Any  possibility  of  the 
position  of  our  troops  being  betrayed  by  the  reflection 
of  light  from  the  surfaces  of  their  "tin  hats,"  as  was 
occasionally  the  case  with  the  Germans'  steel  head- 
gear, was  eliminated  by  dipping  the  helmet  in  olive- 
drab  paint,  scattering  sawdust  over  the  surface  with  a 
blast  of  air,  and  then  repainting  after  the  first  coat  had 
hardened,  thus  producing  an  extremely  coarse  sanded 
appearance.  The  netting  used  in  the  lining  of  the 
American  helmet  was,  however,  a  distinct  improve- 
ment on  the  British  design,  as  it  lessened  the  incon- 
venience caused  by  the  very  considerable  weight — 
slightly  over  two  pounds — and  the  small  pieces  of 
rubber  around  the  edge  of  the  lining  serv^ed  to  keep  the 
metal  away  from  the  head,  so  that  even  relatively  large 
dents  caused  by  bullets  or  sheU  splinters  did  not  reach 
the  wearer's  skull.  The  task  of  designing  our  helmets 
and  body  armor  was  intrusted,  fittingly  enough,  to 
Major  Bashford  Dean,  who  was  admirably  fitted  for 
the  duty  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  he  has  been  for 
many  years  curator  of  tlie  armor  collection  in  the  Met- 


252      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

ropolitan  Museum  of  Art.  It  is  a  curious  fact,  and 
indicative  of  the  extent  to  which  Army  Ordnance  con- 
verted to  war  purposes  countless  peace  industries,  that 
the  steel  for  our  helmets  was  furnished  by  the  Ameri- 
can Tin  Plate  Company — no  wonder  that  the  soldiers 
called  them  "tin  hats"  ! — the  linings  were  produced  by 
various  shoe  manufacturers,  and  the  helmets  were 
assembled  and  painted  by  the  Ford  Motor  Car  Com- 
pany ! 

I  tried  to  make  it  clear  at  the  very  outset  of  this 
chapter  that  the  story  of  Ordnance  is  so  stupendous 
that  the  best  I  could  hope  to  do  in  such  a  narrative  as 
this  would  be  to  dwell  briefly  on  its  most  salient  points. 
This  necessitates  my  passing  by  with  a  few  words  dis- 
coveries and  developments  of  the  greatest  interest  and 
importance,  and  of  dismissing  amazing  achievements 
with  a  paragraph.  Take  the  Nitrate  Division  of  the 
Ordnance  Department,  for  example.  Were  it  to  re- 
ceive its  due,  an  entire  chapter  should  be  devoted 
merely  to  outlining  its  problems,  while  a  whole  book 
could  be  written  on  how  it  solved  them. 

Nitric  acid  is  the  basis  of  all  modern  explosives. 
A  country  possessing  no  nitric  acid  would  be  virtually 
unable  to  fire  a  single  shot.  Before  our  entry  into  the 
war  we  depended  for  our  supply  of  this  essential  in- 
gredient upon  the  sodium-nitrate  beds  of  Chile — the 
only  country  in  the  world  where  nitrates  have  been 
found.  Germany  had  done  the  same,  having  had  the 
foresight,  moreover,  to  accumulate  a  reserve  supply 
estimated  at  375,000  tons.  Had  she  not  taken  steps, 
however,  to  replenish  this  enormous  stock  by  produc- 


ORDNANCE  253 

ing  nitrates  from  the  air  by  the  so-called  ''fixation 
method,"  she  would  inevitably  have  been  compelled 
to  capitulate  when  her  supply  became  exhausted.  It 
quickly  became  apparent  that  if  we  continued  to  rely 
upon  Chile  for  our  supply  of  nitrates  we  would  be 
courting  disaster,  for  Chile,  though  neutral,  had  de- 
cided German  leanings,  and  there  was  always  the  dan- 
ger, therefore,  that  German  diplomacy  or  threats 
might  cause  her  to  place  an  embargo  on  nitrate  ex- 
ports. Even  had  this  danger  not  existed,  our  avail- 
able tonnage  was  extremely  limited  and  a  few  torpedo- 
ings  of  nitrate  ships  would  have  stopped  our  supply, 
thereby  automatically  paralyzing  our  manufacture  of 
explosives.  It  was  determined,  therefore,  to  make  the 
United  States  wholly  independent  of  any  outside  source 
by  the  erection  of  four  enormous  plants  for  the  manu- 
facture of  nitrates  by  the  synthetic  ammonia  and  cy- 
anamide  processes. 

Two  of  these  projects — U.  S.  Nitrate  Plant  No.  i, 
at  Sheffield,  Alabama,  and  U.  S.  Nitrate  Plant  No.  2, 
on  the  Tennessee  River  at  Muscle  Shoals,  Alabama — 
were  both  completed  before  the  signing  of  the  Armis- 
tice. Plant  No.  I,  which  has  a  capacity  of  about 
22,000  tons  of  ammonium  nitrate  a  year,  cost  approxi- 
mately $13,000,000.  Plant  No.  2  makes  five  times 
that  amount  of  ammonium  nitrate  and  cost  five  times 
that  sum.  Plant  No.  3,  at  East  Toledo,  Ohio,  and 
Plant  No.  4,  at  Ancor,  near  Cincinnati,  were  about 
one-quarter  completed  when  the  Armistice  was  signed, 
but,  because  of  the  changed  conditions  governing  the 
suppl}'  of  Chilean  nitrates  as  well  as  the  faciUties  which 


254      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

we  now  possess  in  Alabama  for  manufacturing  them 
ourselves,  they  have  been  discontinued.  In  addition 
to  these  enormous  projects,  a  chemical  plant  was 
erected  at  Saltville,  Virginia,  at  a  cost  of  $2,750,000, 
for  the  manufacture  of  sodium  cyanide  to  be  used  in 
the  production  of  poison-gas.  Though  no  operations 
are  now  (May,  191 9)  being  carried  on  at  any  of  these 
plants,  it  is  believed  that  their  products  will  be  in  wide 
demand  for  farm  fertilizers,  a  project  being  under  con- 
sideration whereby  nitrates  can  be  produced  at  these 
plants  and  sold  to  farmers  at  about  three-quarters  of 
the  price  paid  for  the  Chilean  product. 

This  chapter  already  so  bristles  with  statistics  that 
a  few  more  can  do  no  harm.  They  may  open  your 
eyes,  moreover,  to  the  magnitude  of  our  preparations 
for  producing  nitrates — a  project  which  has  cost  the 
American  people  more  than  $120,000,000,  but  of  which 
not  I  in  10,000  of  them  has  so  much  as  heard.  Take 
Plant  No.  2,  at  Muscle  Shoals,  for  example.  I  would 
be  willing  to  wager  almost  anything  you  please  that 
you  have  never  heard  of  Muscle  Shoals  before.  For 
your  information  it  is  on  the  Tennessee  River,  in 
northern  Alabama,  about  midway  between  Nashville 
and  Chattanooga.  The  power-house  of  this  plant, 
with  its  capacity  of  135,000  horse-power,  has  the  larg- 
est annual  output  of  any  steam-power  plant  in  the 
world,  developing  two- thirds  as  much  power  as  all  the 
hydroelectric  plants  at  Niagara  Falls  put  together.  It 
contains  a  90,000  horse-power  steam-turbine — the  larg- 
est ever  built.  The  ammonia-gas  plant  is  the  largest 
in  the  world.     The  liquid-air  plant  is  five  times  larger 


ORDNANCE  255 

than  any  other  installation  of  its  kind  in  existence.  At 
its  peak  the  camp  at  Muscle  Shoals  had  a  total  popu- 
lation of  21,000.  One  of  its  score  or  more  of  mess-halls 
seats  4,000  persons  at  one  time;  in  it  750  gallons  of 
soup  have  been  prepared  and  2  tons  of  meat  have 
been  roasted  for  a  single  meal.  More  than  a  thousand 
hogs  were  raised  on  the  waste  from  this  mess-hall 
alone.  (Attention  of  Mr.  Hoover !)  The  camp  laun- 
dry washed  6,000  blankets  in  a  single  day.  That  may 
give  you  some  idea  of  the  labor  and  money  involved  in 
preparing  to  make  our  own  nitrates. 

When  it  is  considered  that  the  personnel  of  the 
Ordnance  Department,  at  home  and  overseas,  consisted 
of  6,000  officers  and  nearly  100,000  enlisted  men — 
almost  as  many  as  we  had  in  the  entire  Regular  Army 
before  the  war — and  that  these  officers  and  men  were 
called  upon  to  perform  work  of  a  highly  technical  and 
specialized  nature,  it  will  be  seen  how  important  was 
the  work  of  the  Training  Division.  Among  the  in- 
numerable activities  of  this  division  was  the  Ordnance 
Engineering  School,  where  in  three  months  a  tech- 
nically trained  engineer  was  given  an  insight  into  the 
design  and  manufacture  of  ordnance  materials;  the 
Powder  School  at  Carney's  Point;  the  Ordnance 
Supply  School  at  Fort  Hancock,  and  the  Machine-Gun 
School  at  Springfield.  In  addition  to  these  there  was 
a  school  for  tractor  operators,  a  school  for  instruction 
in  the  repair  and  maintenance  of  ordnance  trucks,  an- 
other for  the  repair  and  maintenance  of  railway-artil- 
lery, and  still  another  for  training  men  in  the  repair 


256      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

of  optical  and  precision  instruments.  It  is  sufficient 
for  an  infantryman  to  know  how  to  use  a  pistol,  a  rifle, 
and  a  machine-gun,  but  the  men  who  wear  on  their 
collars  the  insignia  of  the  Ordnance  Department  have 
to  know  not  only  how  to  operate  those  weapons,  and 
how  to  give  instruction  in  their  operation  to  others, 
but  they  have  to  be  familiar  with  every  detail  of  their 
manufacture  and  repair. 

By  far  the  most  fascinating  feature  of  Ordnance 
activities  in  America  is  the  great  proving-ground  at 
Aberdeen,  Maryland,  thirty  miles  from  Baltimore,  on 
the  shores  of  Chesapeake  Bay.  On  this  remote  and 
jealously  guarded  reservation  is  tested  every  weapon 
and  device,  with  the  exception  of  small  arms,  produced 
by  the  Ordnance  Department.  During  the  height  of 
our  war  preparations,  more  shots  were  fired  here  in  a 
single  day  than  were  fired  at  the  old  proving-grounds 
at  Sandy  Hook  in  a  year.  A  far  greater  quantity  of 
explosive  was  expended  daily  than  was  used  in  many 
of  the  important  battles  of  the  Civil  War.  Here  can 
be  seen  in  action  every  type  of  American  artillery  from 
the  vicious,  hard-hitting  Httle  37-mm.  infantry  can- 
non to  the  camouflaged  monsters  on  railway-mounts, 
streaked  like  zebras  and  spotted  like  giraffes,  which 
can  drop  a  ton  of  explosive  on  a  given  target  thirty 
miles  away.  Giant  tanks,  looking  for  all  the  world 
like  some  strange  species  of  prehistoric  monster,  smash 
their  way  through  patches  of  woodland  or  take 
twelve-foot  trenches  in  their  stride;  field-guns  of  all 
calibres,  camouflaged  and  tractor-mounted,  go  rock- 
ing and  reeling  across  the  broken  fields;  airplanes, 
circHng  in  the  blue,  drop  their  half-ton  bombs  upon 


ORDNANCE  257 

the  targets  marked  out  on  the  fields  below;  showers 
of  shrapnel  from  the  antiaircraft  guns  burst  about 
the  target  parachutes  in  suddenly  unfolding  blossoms 
of  white  and  scarlet.  In  the  recovery-fields  hundreds 
of  men  are  at  work  with  pick  and  shovel  retrieving 
the  fragments  from  the  shell-bursts  in  order  that  they 
may  be  studied  by  the  experts  in  the  laboratories. 
(In  order  to  facilitate  this  extremely  important  work, 
there  has  recently  been  built  a  huge  concrete  reservoir, 
known  as  a  ''recovery- tank,"  into  which  the  shell 
are  fired,  the  fragments  being  recovered  by  means  of 
giant  magnets.)  In  the  powder-bag  department  one 
can  see  storerooms  filled  to  the  ceiling  with  rolls  of 
the  heavy  silk  used  for  making  the  bags  in  which  the 
propelling  charges  are  contained;  in  adjoining  rooms— 
"sweat-shops"  they  are  jokingly  called — scores  of  en- 
listed men,  trained  in  the  clothing-shops  of  New  York's 
East  Side,  cut  and  stitch  the  silk  into  cylindrical  sacks 
in  sizes  to  fit  the  various  calibres  of  guns,  and  some 
distance  away,  in  small,  isolated  buildings,  other  men 
fill  the  sacks  with  greenish-yellow  granules  which  look 
like  mildewed  macaroni,  but  which  is  really  smokeless 
powder.  Over  tett  thousand  miles  of  this  silk  was 
required  for  our  war  programme.  And  it  had  to  be 
the  finest  quality  of  silk,  for  no  other  material  could 
be  depended  upon  not  to  leave  smouldering  fragments 
in  the  barrel  after  its  discharge,  which  would  mean  a 
burst  gun  and  death  to  the  crew  when  the  next  charge 
was  inserted.  Everything  considered,  one  can  get 
more  thrills  and  see  more  things  of  interest  at  Aber- 
deen than  at  any  place  I  know. 

When  time  has  given  it  the  justice  of  perspective, 


258      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

the  war-effort  of  Army  Ordnance  will  be  recognized 
as  the  greatest  industrial  achievement  in  the  history  of 
mankind.  The  more  one  learns  of  it  the  more  it  stag- 
gers the  imagination.  In  nineteen  months  the  Ord- 
nance Department  effected  the  most  complete  mobili- 
zation of  science  and  industry  the  world  has  ever  seen; 
it  produced  munitions  of  certain  classes  in  unprece- 
dented quantities;  it  developed  and  supplied  material 
of  such  superior  design  and  workmanship  as  to  win 
the  praise  of  our  allies  and  the  grudging  admiration  of 
our  enemies;  it  designed,  manufactured,  and  sent  over- 
seas the  best  service  rifle,  the  best  automatic  rifle,  the 
best  pistol,  the  best  machine-gun,  the  best  field-gun, 
the  best  railway-artillery,  the  best  tractor,  and  the 
best  motor-truck  possessed  by  any  army  in  the  world, 
and  it  stood  ready,  when  the  Armistice  was  signed,  to 
turn  loose  on  Europe  such  an  avalanche  of  munitions 
as  the  world  had  never  dreamed  of.  The  American 
people  seem  to  have  completely  overlooked  the  fact 
that  we  had  in  full  swing,  after  we  had  been  at  war  less 
than  forty  weeks,  a  mightier  munitions  programme 
than  Germany  could  attempt  after  preparations  which 
took  forty  years.  But,  though  the  American  people 
did  not  realize  the  stupendous  magnitude  of  their  own 
effort,  the  Germans  did.  It  was  the  news  of  the  pro- 
gramme adopted  by  Army  Ordnance,  and  the  realiza- 
tion that  it  was  going  through,  which,  more  than  any 
single  factor,  perhaps,  convinced  Germany  of  the  utter 
futihty  of  further  resistance.  The  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment, like  the  biblical  prophet,  was  not  without  honor 
save  in  its  own  country. 


VI 
FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY 

AT  about  the  time  that  the  German  War  Lord,  re- 
^  splendent  in  the  eagle-crowned  helmet  and  silver 
cuirass  of  the  Guard  Cuirassiers,  was  haranguing  in 
sonorous  phrases  the  punitive  expedition  which  was 
about  to  depart  for  China,  two  young  mechanics  in 
greasy  overalls  were  at  work  in  an  obscure  machine- 
shop  in  an  Ohio  city  on  a  strange  invention  which  was 
destined  to  prove  a  far  more  potent  weapon  than  the 
Kaiser's  boasted  "shining  sword."  Now  it  is  certain 
that  at  this  period  the  All  Highest  had  never  heard  of 
these  young  mechanics,  and  though  they,  of  course,  had 
heard  of  him,  I  imagine  that  to  the  accounts  of  his 
spectacular  doings  which  appeared  almost  daily  in  the 
newspapers  they  paid  about  as  much  attention  as  they 
did  to  the  gaudy  lithographs  on  the  local  bill-boards 
which  heralded  the  annual  visit  of  the  circus.  Yet, 
could  William  of  Hohenzollem  have  looked  a  dozen 
years  into  the  future,  he  would  have  seen  that  these 
two  silent,  earnest,  unassuming  brothers  from  the 
Middle  Western  town  were  destined  to  have  a  pro- 
founder  effect  on  the  future  of  the  great  empire  which 
he  ruled,  and,  indeed,  on  the  history  of  the  world,  than 
he  and  all  the  princes,  soldiers,  and  statesmen  who  sur- 
rounded him. 

Notwithstanding  the  jibes  and  forebodings  of  the 
professional  critics,  the  ponderous  sarcasms  of  senators 
and  congressmen,  and  the  sensational  stories  of  failure 

259 


26o      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

which  have  appeared  in  the  press,  there  are  few  more 
brilKant  chapters  in  our  national  history  than  the 
story  of  the  airplane.  Do  you  realize,  I  wonder,  that 
the  airplane  is  the  development  of  barely  a  decade? 
Had  a  life-insurance  company,  ten  years  ago,  learned 
that  one  of  its  policy-holders  was  planning  to  take  a 
ride  in  a  ''flying-machine,"  it  would  promptly  have 
cancelled  his  policy.  Yet  to-day  planes  carrying  the 
air-post  between  the  cities  of  the  Eastern  seaboard 
go  booming  down  the  air-lanes  as  regularly  as  express- 
trains  and  without  attracting  much  more  attention. 

The  story  of  the  airplane,  so  far  as  its  relation  to 
the  American  Army  is  concerned,  begins  on  the  little 
flying-field  of  Fort  Myer,  on  the  Virginia  side  of  the 
Potomac,  opposite  Washington.  In  the  late  wmter 
of  1907  the  Signal  Corps  had  issued  an  advertisement 
and  specifications  for  a  heavier-than-air  flying-machine, 
the  chief  requirement  being  that  it  must  remain  in  the 
air  for  an  hour  without  landing.  Most  of  us  will  remem- 
ber the  world-wide  interest  which  was  aroused  by  this 
promised  realization  of  the  dream  of  the  ages.  Dur- 
ing the  trials  the  eyes  of  the  world  were  centred  on  the 
parade-ground  at  Fort  Myer.  The  President  and  the 
members  of  his  cabinet  were  in  frequent  attendance  and 
even  Congress  adjourned  when  it  was  announced  that  a 
flight  would  take  place.  The  story  of  how  the  strange 
contrivance,  looking  lilce  a  combination  of  a  box-kite, 
a  baby-carriage,  and  a  windmill,  which  had  been 
brought  on  from  Dayton  by  the  two  sober-faced 
brothers,  was  trundled  out  onto  the  field;  how,  after 
skimming  along  the  ground,  it  rose  into  the  air  as 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  261 

gracefully  as  a  swallow,  and  how,  after  fulfilling  every 
condition  imposed  by  the  War  Department,  the  first 
machine  was  purchased  by  the  government,  needs  no 
elaboration  here.  The  most  amazing  feature  of  the 
afTair,  barring  only  the  performance  of  the  airplane 
itself,  was  the  fact  that  during  the  eight  years  following 
the  demonstration  at  Fort  Myer  the  entire  appropria- 
tions by  the  government  for  military  aeronautics  amounted 
to  less  titan  a  million  dollars.  Think  of  it,  my  friends ! 
With  the  secret  of  aerial  navigation  in  our  hands — 
a  secret  which  had  been  sought  for  by  scientists  all 
down  the  ages — Congress  devoted  less  money  to  its 
development  during  the  first  eight  years  than  it  spent 
on  many  a  post-office  or  government  building.  But 
the  astounding  apathy  which  characterized  our  attitude 
toward  this  epoch-making  invention  did  not  extend 
to  the  great  European  nations.  They,  always  seeking 
to  obtain  military  superiority,  instantly  recognized  the 
significance  and  the  potentialities  of  those  early  flights 
at  Fort  Myer.  France,  in  particular,  during  the  next 
few  years  making  marked  advances  in  aircraft  design 
and  construction.  Thus  it  came  about  that  when  the 
war-cloud  burst  over  Europe  in  the  summer  of  19 14  the 
United  States,  where  the  airplane  had  its  birth  and 
where  it  had  first  demonstrated  its  practicability,  pos- 
sessed only  a  few  decrepit  and  almost  obsolete  training- 
machines,  while  our  fliers  could  almost  have  been  num- 
bered on  the  fingers  of  one's  two  hands.  Whose  was 
the  fault  for  this  deplorable  and  inexcusable  condition? 
A  certain  amount  of  blame  undeniably  attaches  to  the 
army,  for  in  those  days  many  of  our  higher  officers 


262      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

were  graduates  of  the  old  Indian-fighting  school,  who 
regarded  with  doubt  and  scepticism  the  claim  that  these 
new-fangled  flying-machines  could  have  any  real  mili- 
tary value.  I  think,  however,  that  the  real  cause  of  the 
neglect  in  developing  the  airplane  could  have  been 
found  in  the  building  with  the  great  white  dome 
which  stands  at  the  far  end  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue. 

As  a  direct  consequence  of  our  systematic  dis- 
couragement of  airplane  development,  when  we  en- 
tered the  war  there  was  no  such  thing  as  an  aviation 
industry, in  the  United  States  and  the  number  of  aero- 
nautical engineers  and  designers  was  so  small  as  to 
be  practically  negligible.  In  this  respect  the  problem 
of  developing  an  air-fleet  was  unique.  The  United 
States  had  built  ships  before,  it  had  manufactured 
cannon,  rifles,  ammunition,  it  had  fed  and  clothed  and 
housed  armies,  and  it  had  at  its  command  thousands 
of  men  qualified  to  do  these  things  and  do  them  well, 
but,  barring  a  handful  of  experts  in  Dayton  and  Buffalo, 
there  was  no  one  in  this  country  with  experience  in  the 
designing  or  building  of  either  training  or  fighting 
planes.  In  short,  the  government  was  faced  with  the 
problem  not  merely  of  developing  a  new  industry,  but 
of  creating  it. 

In  April,  191 7,  there  were  being  built  in  the  United 
States  only  four  makes  of  aircraft  engines  that  were  suf- 
ficiently developed  to  be  of  any  military  value,  and 
even  these  were  useful  only  for  primary  training.  We 
had  no  engines  suited  for  service  on  the  battle-front,  or, 
indeed,    even    for    the   advanced    training   of   pilots. 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  263 

Though  the  largest  engine  manufactured  in  the  United 
States  at  this  time  developed  about  220  horse-power, 
it  had  not  measured  up  to  the  exacting  requirements 
of  combat.  The  other  American-built  engines  ranged 
from  90  to  135  horse-power.  It  being  evident,  there- 
fore, that  the  existing  American  engines  could  be  used 
only  for  purposes  of  preliminary  instruction,  it  was 
accordingly  decided  that  their  further  manufacture 
should  be  limited  to  the  training  requirements.  As  a 
result  of  this  decision,  by  far  the  greater  part  of  the 
primar}''  training  of  pilots  has  been  conducted  with  the 
Curtis  90  horse-power  engine,  a  quantity  production  of 
which  was  obtained  early  in  the  war,  this  engine  being 
particularly  valuable  owing  to  the  very  satisfactory 
training-plane  which  had  been  designed  around  it. 
Considerable  use  was  also  made  of  the  Hall-Scott  100 
horse-power  engine  until  the  Curtiss  motor  could  be 
manufactured  in  sufficient  numbers  to  meet  all  demands 
for  primary  training.  Two  European  engines,  the 
Gnome  100  horse-power  and  the  Hispano-Suiza  150 
horse-power,  were  also  being  put  into  production  in 
the  United  States  at  this  time.  These  engines  repre- 
sented the  highest  product  of  European  design  and  en- 
gineering skill,  and  were  in  a  perfected  and  standardized 
state,  at  least  according  to  European  ideas,  when  their 
manufacture  was  undertaken  in  this  countr}-.  But  the 
changes  involved  in  adapting  them  to  manufacture  by 
American  methods  required  so  much  time,  and  the 
advances  made  in  aeronautical  engineering  were  so 
rapid,  that  before  they  could  be  produced  in  sufficient 
numbers  they  were  almost  obsolete  for  service  on  the 


264      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

front.  These  two  engines  were,  however,  of  unques- 
tioned value  for  advanced  training  purposes,  the  His- 
pano-Suiza  in  particular  playing  an  important  part  in 
this  work.  Later  another  European  engine,  the  80 
horse-power  Rhone,  was  also  put  into  production. 

One  of  the  serious  mistakes  into  which  the  Allies 
had  fallen  at  the  time  the  United  States  entered  the  war 
was  the  development  of  such  a  multiplicity  of  types  of 
engines  and  planes  that  it  was  impossible  to  have  a  large 
number  of  any  one  of  them.  Indeed,  by  the  spring  of 
191 7,  there  were  ahnost  as  many  types  of  planes  skim- 
ming over  the  Western  Front  as  there  were  types  of  mo- 
tor-cars skimming  over  American  roads.  As  a  direct 
consequence  of  this  condition,  the  trained  personnel 
had  grown  to  such  proportions  that  it  was  estimated 
that  from  thirty  to  fifty  men  were  required  on  the 
ground  to  keep  each  plane  in  the  air.  It  was  obvious, 
therefore,  that  unless  this  large  number  of  trained  at- 
tendants could  be  materially  reduced,  it  would  be 
hopeless  to  expect  to  put  thousands  of  fighting  planes 
into  the  air  within  a  reasonable  time,  for,  on  this  basis, 
1,000  planes  would  require  from  30,000  to  50,000  men 
to  take  care  of  them.  It  was  realized,  moreover,  that 
copies  of  foreign  designs  could  not  be  made  available 
in  time  to  answer  the  insistent  demand  that  America 
should  put  on  the  front  an  air  force  of  overwhelming 
proportions. 

Although,  immediately  upon  the  declaration  of 
war,  an  aircraft  commission  had  been  sent  to  Europe 
for  the  purpose  of  gathering  first-hand  information, 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  265 

public  sentiment  would  not  have  permitted  the  govern- 
ment to  sit  idly  by  and  wait  with  folded  hands  for  this 
commission  to  make  its  report.  What  the  country 
demanded  was  action  with  a  capital  A.  Now  it  is  not 
generally  known,  perhaps,  that,  instead  of  engines  being 
designed  for  certain  types  of  aircraft,  the  most  success- 
ful airplanes  are  designed  around  specific  engines. 
And,  as  the  development  of  the  engine  requires  the 
greatest  expenditure  of  effort  and  time,  some  one  sug- 
gested that,  instead  of  waiting  for  the  members  of  the 
commission  to  come  home  and  tell  about  the  European 
engines  they  had  seen,  to  manufacture  which  under 
American  conditions  might  well  prove  impracticable, 
an  all-American  engine,  combining  the  best  features 
of  the  various  European  types  but  particularly  adapted 
for  manufacture  under  domestic  conditions,  be  de- 
signed by  the  best  engineering  talent  in  the  country 
and  immediately  placed  in  production.  At  a  meeting 
of  representatives  of  the  Signal  Corps — which  then 
had  charge  of  military  aeronautics — and  the  Aircraft 
Production  Board  it  was  decided  to  put  this  suggestion 
into  immediate  execution,  at  the  same  time  purchasing 
in  Europe  whatever  equipment  might  be  available  in 
order  to  tide  over  the  period  while  the  all-American 
engine  was  being  put  into  production. 

At  noon  on  May  29,  Lieutenant-Colonel  J.  G.  Vin- 
cent and  Lieutenant-Colonel  E.  J.  Hall,  two  of  the 
most  brilliant  automotive  engineers  in  America,  shut 
themselves  in  a  room  of  the  New  Willard  Hotel  in 
Washington.  When  they  left  that  room  again  on  the 
afternoon  of  the  31st,  though  haggard  from  lack  of 


266      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

sleep,  they  had  in  their  hands  the  completed  assembly- 
drawings  df  an  ent^irely  new  airplane  engine.  Thus 
was  bom  the  famous  Liberty  engine,  about  which 
hundreds  of  speeches  have  been  made  and  thousands 
of  columns  have  been  written  in  scepticism,  in  criticism, 
and  in  praise.  As  the  result  of  the  enthusiastic  co- 
operation of  some  ten  manufacturers,  each  of  whom 
produced  those  parts  for  which  his  factory  was  best 
fitted,  the  first  Liberty,  an  8-cylinder,  was  built  in 
thirty  days.  The  first  12-cylinder  engine  completed 
its  official  endurance  test  eighty-two  days  from  the 
time  the  order  for  samples  was  given,  the  unqualified 
success  of  this  test  removing  the  Liberty  from  the  realm 
of  experimeintation  to  that  of  estabHshed  reputation. 
In  just  one  year  from  the  day  that  Lieutenant-Colonels 
Hall  and  Vincent  pushed  the  thumb-tacks  into  their 
drawing-boards  in  the  hotel  room,  1,100  Liberty 
"twelves"  were  produced — a  remarkable  illustration 
of  the  ability  and  ingenuity  of  American  engineers  and 
the  energy  and  resourcefulness  of  American  manu- 
facturers. Thanks  to  the  energetic  co-operation  of 
many  manufacturers,  more  than  14,000  Liberty  engines 
had  been  completed  when  the  Armistice  was  signed. 
There  are  few  finer  passages  in  the  history  of  America's 
participation  in  the  war  than  the  story  of  how  our  manu- 
facturers put  aside  their  private  interests  and  their  com- 
mercial rivalries  and  threw  themselves  and  their  or- 
ganizations, heart  and  soul,  into  the  work  of  building 
an  airplane  that  would  make  America  mistress  of  the 
skies. 

When  the  signing  of  the  Armistice  brought  our 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE  SKY  267 

eflforts  to  an  abrupt  conclusion,  there  had  been  devel- 
oped, tested,  and  adopted  by  the  army  four  t>7)es  of 
airplanes,  production  of  which  would  have  started  early 
in  1919.  They  were  the  Lepere,  or  L.  U.  S.  A.  C.  II, 
a  two-seated  fighting-plane  equipped  with  a  Liberty 
engine;  the  U.  S.  De  Haviland  9-A,  a  day-bombing 
and  reconnaissance  plane  also  fitted  with  the  Liberty 
engine;  the  huge  Martin  bomber,  with  a  gross  weight  of 
nearly  5  tons,  driven  by  two  Liberty  engines;  and  the 
Loening,  a  two-seated  combat  plane  fitted  with  the 
300  horse-power  Hispano-Suiza  engine. 

A  striking  illustration  of  the  new  problems  and 
extraordinary  ramifications  incident  to  this  great  new 
industry  which  so  suddenly  came  into  existence  in  the 
United  States  is  the  fact  that  it  was  found  necessary  to 
despatch  an  agricultural  expert  post-haste  to  India  to 
purchase  enormous  quantities  of  castor-beans,  as  it 
was  at  first  believed  that  castor-oil  was  the  only  satis- 
factory lubricant  for  these  new  types  of  high-speed, 
high-power  engines.  India's  stock  of  castor-beans  be- 
ing quickly  exhausted  by  the  immensity  of  our  de- 
mands, more  than  100,000  acres  of  the  bean  were 
planted  in  the  United  States.  Meanwhile,  research 
work  with  mineral  oils  was  carried  on  intensively,  a 
lubricant  eventually  being  developed  which  proved 
satisfactory  in  practically  every  airplane  engine  except 
the  rotary  typey  for  which  castor-oil  is  still  preferred. 

But  the  aircraft  problem  was  by  no  means  solved 
with  the  development  and  production  of  the  Liberty 
engine.  Far  from  it.  To  build  airplanes  requires 
wood;  the  best  timber  in  the  world  is  none  too  good; 


268      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

and  of  suitable  timber  there  was  a  comparatively 
limited  supply.  The  best  wood  known  for  airplane 
construction  is  the  Sitka  spruce,  which  combines  the 
required  qualities  of  strength,  resiliency,  and  hghtness. 
This  spruce  grows  mostly  in  the  Pacific  Northwest, 
along  the  tide-lands  of  Washington  and  Oregon,  at  a 
low  elevation.  But  not  all  the  planes  were  built  of 
spruce,  fir,  as  it  grows  in  the  Northwest,  being  largely 
used  for  the  heavier  wing-beams.  Port  Orford  cedar 
was  eagerly  utilized  whenever  it  could  be  obtained.  It 
is  of  somewhat  smaller  growth  than  spruce  or  fir,  but 
a  straighter-grained  wood,  harder  and  more  dense 
than  either  of  the  others.  Of  this  splendid  wood  there 
is,  however,  only  a  comparatively  small  quantity, 
2,000,000,000  feet,  perhaps,  anywhere  in  the  world, 
mostly  near  Coos  Bay,  on  the  coast  of  Oregon.  Being 
less  affected  by  water  than  any  of  the  other  woods,  it 
was  reserved  for  use  in  seaplanes.  The  government 
commandeered  the  entire  supply  of  Port  Orford  cedar 
for  aircraft  production,  but  released  it  upon  the  signing 
of  the  armistice. 

There  is  plenty  of  suitable  airplane  timber — spruce, 
cedar,  and  fir — in  the  Far  Nor'west — miles  and  miles 
and  miles  of  it.  The  mountain-slopes  are  as  solid  a 
black  with  the  evergreens  as  though  a  giant  had  painted 
them  with  soot.  "Massed  in  their  black  battalions 
stand  the  bleak,  barbarian  pines."  Foohsh  men  have 
tried  to  destroy  these  forests.  Twenty  years  ago  a 
colony  of  Poles  settled  amid  the  virgin  forests  of  the 
Olympic  Peninsula — a  portion  of  the  United  States 
which    to    this    day    remains    virtually    unexplored. 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE  SKY  269 

Timber  was  not  worth  a  dollar  a  million  feet  then. 
On  the  chance  that  the  ground  might  be  tilled  if  the 
timber  could  be  cleared  off,  the  settlers  started  a  fire 
that  burned  over  ten  square  miles  and  destro)'ed 
timber  which,  at  prevailing  prices,  would  be  worth 
close  to  half  a  million  dollars.  The  great  area  of 
blackened  waste  which  remains  is  still  known  as 
"The  Polander  Burn." 

Now  spruce,  curiously  enough,  had  not  been  con- 
sidered a  valuable  wood  for  the  ordinary  lumber  trade; 
the  lumbermen  held  it  a  doubtful  asset  that  was  hardly 
worth  the  cutting.  As  a  result  of  this  condition,  the 
commercial  supply  was  neither  large  enough  nor  well 
enough  selected  and  prepared  to  meet  our  aircraft 
requirements  when  the  declaration  of  war  suddenly 
made  it  one  of  the  most  desired  and  most  valuable 
woods  in  existence.  Thus  it  came  about  that,  the 
lumbermen  being  unable  to  supply  the  demand,  the 
army  had  to  go  instantly  into  the  business  of  produc- 
ing this  wood  in  theretofore  undreamed-of  quantities. 
The  work  of  getting  out  the  spruce  fell,  rather  oddly,  to 
the  men  who  had  been  among  the  first  to  volunteer 
for  extrahazardous  service  in  France.  Before  the  war, 
when  airplanes  were  looked  on  merely  as  toys  of  the 
rich,  the  supervision  of  military  aeronautics  was  as- 
signed to  the  Signal  Corps,  on  the  assumption  that  if 
flying  had  any  part  in  warfare  it  would  probably  be 
that  of  signalling,  for  which  reason,  and  the  more  potent 
one  that  no  other  branch  of  the  service  knew  what  to 
do  with  it,  it  had  to  be  wished  on  some  one.  And  of 
all  the  branches  of  the  army,  possibly  none  save  the 


270      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Flying  Section  of  the  Signal  Corps — as  the  Air  Service 
was  then  known — had  a  more  adventurous  and  devil- 
may-care  personnel.  The  Signal  Corps  made  its 
original  appeal  to  the  men  who  wanted  to  get  out  and 
do  things:  to  be  in  front,  to  wave  the  little  red-and- 
white  flags  under  shell-fire,  to  sound  the  long  yell,  to 
see  the  enemy  first,  to  be  the  eyes  and  ears  and  nerves 
of  the  whole  army.  But,  as  I  have  already  explained, 
the  army  had  to  have  the  spruce  in  order  to  carry  out 
its  aviation  programme,  and  aviation  was  under  the 
Signal  Corps,  and  it  was  from  the  Signal  Corps,  there- 
fore, that  the  men  were  drawn  to  go  out  to  the  North- 
west and  get  the  spruce.  Thus  it  came  about  that  the 
boys  who  enlisted  at  the  very  beginning  in  order  that 
they  might  have  the  danger  and  excitement  of  laying 
the  field  telegraphs  and  telephones,  of  dashing  madly 
along  shell-swept  roads  on  roaring  motorcycles,  of  wig- 
wagging and  semaphoring  word  of  the  enemy's  move- 
ments from  in  front  of  the  armies,  were  shipped  west- 
ward instead  of  eastward,  were  given  axes  instead  of 
Enfields  and  peaveys  instead  of  pistols,  and  fought 
their  share  of  the  war  in  the  gloomy  depths  of  the  pri- 
meval forest,  or  on  the  logging  railroads  and  in  the 
sawmills  which  they  built  in  bitter  cold  and  driving 
rain. 

Labor  conditions  were  undeniably  bad  in  the 
Northwest  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  There  is  an  old 
proverb  that  "A  farm  lease  is  a  conspiracy  on  the  part 
of  the  tenant  and  the  absentee  landlord  to  rob  the  land." 
Lumbering  was  almost  as  bad.  The  owners  were  avari- 
cious and  arrogant,  the  men  stubborn  and  defiant.    The 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE   SKY  271 

owners  would  not  make  camp  improvements  because 
"the  men  would  not  stay  on  the  job,"  and  the  men 
would  not  stay  because  ''the  owners  didn't  make  things 
decent."  And,  to  make  things  worse,  the  paid  German 
propaganda  was  rampant,  unchecked  in  the  woods,  for 
the  Wilhelmstrasse  fully  realized  how  vital  it  was  to 
cripple  the  American  air  programme.  Germany  knew 
better  than  we  did  the  war  possibiHties  of  the  Pacific 
Northwest.  She  couldn't  buy  spruce  there  for  her 
planes,  but  she  could  mobilize  her  spies  and  trouble- 
makers and  hinder  the  production  for  and  the  delivery 
of  spruce  to  the  United  States  and  her  allies.  And  she 
did  her  worst.  Some  day  there  will  be  told  the  story, 
the  "inside"  story,  of  the  campaign  waged  in  the  Great 
Woods  by  the  secret  forces  of  Germany — a  campaign 
consistmg  of  strikes,  I.  W.  W.  demonstrations,  forest- 
fires,  railway  wrecks,  dynamited  bridges,  damaged 
machinery,  infernal  machines,  shootings,  systematic 
intimidation,  and  all  the  other  deviltries  of  a  vicious 
and  unscrupulous  enemy.  The  spies  and  secret  agents 
which  Germany  planted  in  the  forests  of  the  Northwest 
formed  a  part  of  the  vast  army  of  which  the  Kaiser 
boasted  to  Ambassador  Gerard.  But  the  Hun  made  a 
miscalculation.  There  were  not  enough  spies;  there 
were  too  many  Americans. 

The  War  Department  has  rarely  shown  greater 
wisdom  than  when  it  gave  a  colonel's  commission  to 
Brice  P.  Disque,  an  ex-captain  of  Regulars  who  had  left 
the  army  to  accept  the  wardenship  of  the  Michigan 
State  Prison,  and  put  him  in  charge  of  spruce  produc- 
tion.    Captain  Disque  had  his  blanket-roll  packed  and 


2/2      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE   ARMY 

aboard  ship  for  service  in  France  when  he  was  called 
to  Washington,  just  as  the  transport  was  setting  sail, 
and  ordered  to  go  to  the  Northwest  and  investigate 
lumbering  conditions.  His  report  showed  that  the 
right  man  had  been  found  to  direct  the  Titanic  job  of 
getting  out  the  spruce;  he  was  commissioned  a  colonel 
and  later  a  brigadier-general,  and  the  story  of  the  spruce 
production  tells  the  rest. 

To  the  tact  and  vision  of  General  Disque  is  due  the 
creation  of  that  remarkable  organization  known  as  the 
Loyal  Legion  of  Loggers  and  Lumbermen,  an  associa- 
tion conceived  to  bring  capital  and  labor  together  in  one 
mighty  machine  driven  solely  by  patriotism.  Under 
the  inspiration  thus  provided,  both  sides  agreed  to  sub- 
mit their  differences  to  the  United  States  Army,  as 
represented  in  the  person  of  General  Disque,  as  final 
arbiter.  The  eight-hour  day  was  agreed  to;  camp 
sanitation  and  better  living  conditions  of  every  kind 
were  demanded;  a  uniformly  liberal  wage-scale  for  all 
classes  of  labor  was  adopted;  a  standard  mess  was  ar- 
ranged to  check  the  inordinate  waste  of  food  in  the 
lumber-camps;  the  owners  were  given  profitable  prices 
for  their  output  under  the  new  conditions,  and  the 
small  men  were  assured  of  receiving  a  square  deal  from 
their  powerful  corporate  rivals.  Some  of  these  ques- 
tions were  settled  through  regular  military  channels, 
but  most  of  them  through  the  medium  of  the  L.  L.  L.  L. 
Once  a  matter  could  be  shown  to  be  reasonable  and  fair 
to  every  one  concerned,  it  was  officially  adopted,  as  by 
a  majority  vote,  and  business  as  well  as  patriotic  rea- 
sons demanded  that  every  one  should  cheerfully  ac- 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  273 

quiesce  in  the  decision.  The  Loyal  Legion  works — 
for  it  has  been  made  permanent — through  its  local 
assemblies;  any  local  disagreement  is  taken  to  the  dis- 
trict council — which  is  formed  from  local  representa- 
tives of  both  employer  and  employees,  there  being  eight 
of  these  district  councils  in  the  Coast  Division  and 
four  in  the  Inland  Empire.  Any  question  which  cannot 
be  settled  by  a  district  council  goes  to  the  Central  Coun- 
cil, composed  of  one  employer  and  one  employee  from 
each  district;  while  General  Disque,  as  the  head  of 
the  Legion,  has  been  the  final  arbitrator  in  such  ques- 
tions as  the  Central  Council  could  not  settle.  Since 
this  plan  was  definitely  adopted,  however,  so  strong  a 
spirit  of  patriotic  fairness  has  been  developed  on  both 
sides  that  nothing  has  gone  to  him  for  settlement  or 
revision.  Nothing  could  more  strongly  emphasize  the 
success  of  the  Legion,  which  now  has  a  membership  of 
nearly  130,000,  than  the  fact  that  at  a  mass  convention, 
held  shortly  after  the  signing  of  the  Armistice,  at  which 
more  than  900  local  councils  were  represented,  it  was 
voted  almost  unanimously  to  perpetuate  the  organiza- 
tion, to  continue  the  publication  of  its  official  bulletin, 
and  to  invite  General  Disque  to  continue  as  the  Legion's 
head.  Were  the  people  of  the  Pacific  Northwest  to 
receive  no  other  reward  for  their  sacrifices  in  the  war, 
they  have  reason  to  feel  amply  repaid  by  the  creation 
of  the  Loyal  Legion  and  the  resultant  ending  of  the 
long-standing  feud  between  capital  and  labor,  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  I.  W.  W.'s  and  similar  discordant  and 
dangerous  elements,  the  betterment  of  working  and 
living  conditions  for  the  lumbermen,  and  the  com- 


274      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

mencement  of  an  era  of  peace  and  prosperity  in  the 
Great  Woods. 


Unless  you  have  been  in  the  Northwest  during  the 
rainy  season  you  can  have  no  adequate  conception  of 
the  difficulties  under  which  the  spruce  squadrons  la- 
bored. The  coastal  districts  of  Oregon  and  Washing- 
ton have  one  of  the  heaviest  rainfalls  recorded  anywhere 
on  earth.  Unkind  people  have  said  of  the  Pacific 
Northwest  that  it  has  but  two  seasons — the  rainy  sea- 
son and  August.  But  that  is  an  exaggeration.  The 
local  newspapers  alternately  boast  of  and  apologize 
for  the  reputed  i8o  inches,  or  15  feet,  of  annual  pre- 
cipitation. With  that  as  a  basis  for  one's  calculations, 
the  old  man  who  sold  the  town  site  of  Simescarey,  the 
terminus  of  the  spruce  road  which  the  government 
has  built  into  the  Olympic  Peninsula,  has  had  450  feet 
of  water  descend  upon  his  head — for  the  inhabitants  of 
that  region  scorn  umbrellas — in  the  thirty  years  that 
he  has  resided  there.  After  a  winter  spent  in  the 
Northwest — and  having  passed  one  there,  I  know 
whereof  I  speak — one  might  easily  believe  that  the 
sentry  at  an  Oregon  spruce-camp  was  not  joking  when 
he  came  in  to  the  commanding  officer  to  report  the 
damages  done  by  the  rain. 

''  Sir,"  he  apologized,  "I  don't  like  to  be  a  pessimist, 
but  things  ain't  going  right  to-day.  Most  of  the  fish 
in  the  lake  are  dead  since  last  night's  rain.  The  lake 
raised  so  fast  that  some  of  'em  got  beyond  their  depth 
and  was  just  naturally  drowned;  the  rest  couldn't 
swim  up  fast  enough,  and  bein'  surface  fish  and  not 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  275 

used  to  much  depth,  their  bladders  busted  and  there 
ain't  a  fit  fish  left  in  the  whole  bunch.  Every  duck 
but  one  is  dead,  too;  the  rain  beat  their  heads  into  a 
mush — all  but  the  one  that  got  caught  in  a  steel  trap 
set  for  a  muskrat  and  that  saved  his  life — he  stayed 
under  water  where  it  was  dry.  Believe  me,  sir,  that  was 
the  wettest  rain  last  night  I  ever  see." 

Because,  as  I  have  already  explained,  the  lumber- 
men did  not  consider  spruce  a  profitable  wood  to 
handle,  few  of  the  spruce  forests  had  been  penetrated 
by  railroads.  So  Disque  and  his  Legionaries  set  out 
to  build  railways  themselves — 13  lines  with  more  than 
300  miles  of  trackage.  The  forests  tapped  by  these 
new  lines  and  their  branches  have,  it  is  estimated,  an 
ultimate  production  of  33,000,000,000  feet  of  lumber, 
a  quantity  almost  beyond  the  comprehension  of  the 
human  brain.  In  order  to  visualize  it,  it  must  be 
translated  into  commonplace,  ever}^-day  terms.  Let 
us  assume  that  it  requires  20,000  feet  of  lumber  to 
build  an  average  5  or  6  room  house.  Taking  this  as 
a  basis,  the  railways  built  by  Disque  and  his  spruce 
squadrons  have  brought  within  the  reach  of  commerce 
enough  timber  to  build  almost  2,000,000  of  these  com- 
fortable American  homes,  with  sufficient  waste  wood  to 
keep  them  heated  for  a  generation.  When  the  war 
ended,  1 74,000,000  feet  of  aircraft  lumber  had  been  cut 
and  shipped — enough  to  build  dwellings  for  the  in- 
habitants of  a  good-sized  city. 

The  government  planned  to  have  all  the  airplane 
stock  from  the  Northwest  cut  at  the  one  great  cut-up 


276      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

plant  at  Vancouver,  near  Portland.  This  huge  mill, 
the  largest  in  the  world,  was  built  by  the  army  in  forty- 
five  days  and  has  handled  more  than  a  million  and  a  half 
feet  of  lumber  in  twenty-four  hours.  But  with  the 
extension  of  the  airplane  programme,  whereby  the 
Spruce  Division  was  called  upon  to  furnish  stock  for  all 
the  Allies,  more  capacity  was  required  and  three 
other  great  plants  of  almost  equal  size  were  planned, 
one  being  ready  for  opening,  one  almost  completed, 
and  one  projected  when  the  Armistice  was  signed. 
These  four  huge  mills  would,  it  is  estimated,  have 
furnished  the  United  States  and  her  allies  with  close 
to  icxD,ooo,ooo  feet  of  airplane  lumber  a  month. 

The  silent,  peaceful  forests  of  the  Northwest 
seemed  separated  from  the  war  by  a  million  miles, 
a  score  of  generations.  But  when  the  word  was 
flashed  from  Washington  to  Disque  to  "Go  ahead,"  the 
primeval  silence  of  the  woods  was  suddenly  shattered 
by  a  million  bellowing  echoes  of  battle.  The  war 
had  come  to  America.  Almost  overnight  the  battle- 
front  moved  6,000  miles  westward — from  the  forests 
of  the  Argonne  to  the  forests  of  Oregon.  The  trucks 
were  brought  in — endless  caravans  of  grunting,  strain- 
ing monsters;  the  soldiers  came,  30,000  in  all;  the 
loggers,  graders,  hard-rock  men,  sawyers,  surveyors, 
engineers;  the  pile-drivers,  the  donkey-engines,  the 
steam-shovels  perched  on  wheels,  the  tram-loads  of 
food  and  tools  and  powder;  the  patient,  sweating  horses 
and  the  creaking  wagons,  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
them.  The  wood  roads  were  black  with  traffic;  they 
fairly  smoked  with  the  fierce  fight  for  speed.    The 


FIGHTERS   OF   THE   SKY  277 

highways  were  dust  in  the  early  fall,  where  the  5  or  1 5 
ton  loads  ground  the  roads  to  powder.  Then  the  wet 
weather  came — fogs,  mists,  drizzles,  showers,  floods — 
the  rainy  season  that  grows  the  incomparable  forests  of 
the  Northwest. 

They  splashed  through  it  all,  soldiers  and  Legion- 
aries alike;  they  waded,  they  swam,  they  shivered  and 
swore,  and  beat  their  hands  over  the  brush  fires — but 
the  stream  of  supplies  never  stopped  nor  checked.  The 
railway  gangs,  following  close  on  the  heels  of  the  axe- 
men, laid  their  twin  lines  of  steel  through  the  dripping 
forest  faster  than  Kitchener  laid  down  his  desert  rail- 
way to  Khartoum,  the  locomotives  crawling  one  mile, 
two  miles,  deeper  into  the  wilderness  each  night.  Night 
and  day  the  forest  trails  were  busy.  Shuttling  back 
and  forth,  loaded  both  ways  with  materials  and  men, 
teams  and  trucks  and  trains  struggled  for  speed.  Head- 
lights, lanterns,  shouted  warnings,  guided  the  night 
traffic  along  the  sombre,  shut-in  ways.  Clanl^ings, 
clatterings,  gasoline  coughings,  the  honk  of  horns  and 
the  hoot  of  locomotives  filled  the  air.  The  silent  forest 
became  a  bedlam  of  sound,  of  action. 

The  spruce !  The  fir !  The  wings  of  victory ! 
Berlin  heard  it,  saw  it  first.  The  splitting  blasts  that 
showered  the  forest  lakes  with  stones,  the  shouting, 
heaving  din  of  the  construction-camps,  the  crash  of 
the  trees  as  they  fell  before  the  axe  and  saw  of  the 
woodsmen,  the  whine  of  the  cables  through  the  sheaves 
as  the  huge  logs  were  snaked  into  position  for  loading, 
the  rumble  and  roar  of  the  hea\'y-laden  log-trains,  the 
shriek  of  the  giant  saws  in  the  mills — all  these  sounds 


278      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

fell  upon  the  listening  ears  at  German  Great  Head- 
quarters with  a  growing  menace,  as  ominous  as  the 
tattoo  of  the  machine-guns,  as  the  thunderous  blast  of 
the  great  Allied  cannon,  as  the  victorious  cheers  of  the 
charging  Yanks.  They  meant  that  the  spruce  was 
coming!  The  planes  were  coming!  A  few  months 
more  and  the  boasted  Hindenburg  Line  would  be  a  joke. 
The  Germans  knew  that  they  could  not  build  trenches 
in  the  clouds.  That  was  the  real  reason  why  they 
were  attacked  by  yellow  fever  in  the  fall  of  1918. 

The  engines  and  the  planes  themselves  being  in 
production,  the  next  problem  to  be  solved  by  the  War 
Department  was  to  provide  our  new  aerial  navy  with 
armament  in  the  form  of  machine-guns.  Fighting  in 
the  air,  it  should  be  remembered,  is  entirely  a  develop- 
ment of  the  Great  War,  the  adaptation  of  machine-guns 
for  airplane  use  having  practically  all  taken  place  since 
1 9 14.  Though  the  records  show  that  a  machine-gun 
was  successfully  fired  from  an  airplane  in  this  country 
in  1 9 12,  and  though  the  French  had  a  few  heavy  planes 
fitted  with  mitrailleuses  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  it 
was  not  until  191 5  that  machine-guns  were  carried  by 
planes  on  active  service.  Prior  to  that  time  aviators 
depended  on  service  and  automatic  rifles,  pistols,  shot- 
guns shooting  large  shot  held  together  by  wires — minia- 
ture editions  of  the  chain-shot  used  by  early  sea- 
fighters — and  also  carried  darts  and  grenades  to  drop 
on  the  enemy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  one  of  the  first 
aerial  combats  of  the  war,  which  took  place  on  the 
Eastern   Front  between   a   Russian   aviator   and   an 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  279 

Austrian,  weapons  were  not  used  at  all.  The  Russian 
determined  to  wreck  his  adversary  and,  in  pursuance  of 
this  plan,  so  manoeuvred  his  plane  that  the  tips  of  his 
wings  were  just  beneath  the  wings  of  the  Austrian. 
He  then  suddenly  elevated  that  end  of  his  plane, 
hoping  to  upset  the  Austrian,  but  the  result  was  that 
both  machines  collided  and  fell  to  the  ground.  Major 
Eric  T.  Bradley,  formerly  in  the  British  Army  but  now 
an  officer  of  the  American  Air  Service,  tells  of  having 
flown  over  the  lines  in  191 5  armed  with  a  twelve-gauge 
double-barrel  shotgun  loaded  with  buckshot  tied  to- 
gether with  wire,  which  swished  through  the  air  like 
the  lash  of  a  whip  and  occasionally  hit  something — 
usually  by  chance. 

The  development  of  methods  for  controlling 
machine-guns  so  that  they  can  be  fired  through  the 
area  traversed  by  the  propeller  has  had  a  vast  effect 
on  aerial  combat,  and  an  understanding  of  the  problems 
involved  is  necessary  in  order  to  appreciate  the  difficul- 
ties which  had  to  be  overcome.  The  various  devices 
which  have  been  developed  for  controlling  the  fire  of 
a  machine-gun  so  as  to  cause  the  bullets  to  miss  the 
blades  of  the  propeller  are  commonly  known  as  syn- 
chronizing or  interrupter  gears.  These  terms  are,  how- 
ever, somewhat  inaccurate,  as  it  is  only  occasionally 
that  the  speed  of  the  propeller  is  equal  to  the  rate  of  fire 
of  the  gun,  which  is  the  condition  of  synchronization; 
moreover,  the  gun  is  not  interrupted,  but  is  caused  to 
fire  at  the  proper  moment  so  that  the  bullet  will  miss 
the  propeller-blade.  ''Gun  control"  would  be  a  more 
descriptive  name  for  the  device. 


28o      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Tractor  airplanes — those  which  have  the  engine 
and  propeller  in  front — were  early  found  to  be  better 
suited  to  combat  work  than  planes  of  the  "pusher" 
t^'pe,  which  have  the  propeller  behind,  because  they 
possess  greater  manoeuvring  powers  and  are  better  able 
to  defend  themselves.  With  these  planes  was  de- 
veloped the  fixed  aircraft  machine-gun.  This  gun  is 
fixed  rigidly  to  the  plane,  pointing  straight  ahead, 
parallel  to  the  line  of  flight.  The  first  fixed  guns  were 
mounted  on  the  upper  plane  so  as  to  shoot  over  the  arc 
described  by  the  propeller,  but  these  were  not  satis- 
factory Giving  to  the  difficulty  in  reloading  the  gun. 
To  overcome  this  very  obvious  disadvantage  the  gun 
was  lowered,  which  brought  its  line  of  fire  inside  the 
arc  described  by  the  propeller  blades.  Thus  arose  the 
difficulty  caused  by  shooting  into  the  propeller,  to  solve 
which  countless  experiments  were  made  and  numerous 
expedients  tried.  At  first  the  blades  were  armored 
at  the  points  where  the  bullets  would  strike,  with  steel 
of  a  shape  calculated  to  cause  the  bullets  to  glance  off, 
but  this  system  was  never  satisfactory.  Then  the  ex- 
periment was  tried  of  wrapping  the  propeller  with 
linen  to  keep  it  from  splintering,  as  it  was  found  that 
several  bullets  could  be  fired  through  a  propeller  thus 
treated  without  causing  it  to  break.  Throughout  the 
summer  of  191 5  all  of  the  Nieuport  fighting-planes  used 
by  the  French  were  fitted  with  fixed  guns  shooting 
through  the  propeller — if  a  bullet  hit  the  propeller  it 
either  went  through  it  or  it  wrecked  it. 

There  is  considerable  disagreement  as  to  who  in- 
vented the  device  for  controlling  the  fire  of  a  machine- 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  281 

gun  so  as  not  to  strike  the  blade  of  the  propeller,  but 
it  is  admitted  that  the  Germans  were  the  first  to  make 
any  extensive  use  of  it,  introducing  it  on  the  Fokker 
monoplanes,  which  caused  so  much  damage  on  the 
Western  Front  in  191 5.  Shortly  thereafter  the  AUies 
adopted  similar  devices.  When  the  United  States  en- 
tered the  war  neither  the  Ordnance  Department  nor 
the  Aviation  Section  of  the  Signal  Corps  had  had  any 
experience  worthy  of  the  name  with  aircraft  guns. 
And  if  they  were  ill-informed  on  the  subject  of  guns, 
they  were  appallingly  ignorant  on  the  subject  of  gun 
controls.  A  few  months  of  study  and  experiments 
served  to  materially  increase  the  War  Department's 
knowledge  along  these  Imes,  however,  and  by  the  time 
the  planes  were  ready  to  receive  the  guns  we  had 
adopted  a  device  known  as  the  Constantinisco  control. 
I  should  explain,  perhaps,  that  there  are  two  distinct 
t>^es  of  gun  control,  both  of  which  were  in  use  when 
hostilities  ceased.  One  is  hydraulic,  the  other  me- 
chanical. The  operation  of  both  t}^es  is  somewhat 
similar.  In  each  case  a  cam  mounted  on  the  shaft  of 
the  engine  actuates  a  plunger  which  in  turn  operates 
the  rest  of  the  mechanism.  In  the  mechanical  gun 
control  the  impulse  of  the  cam  is  transmitted  to  the 
gun  through  a  series  of  rods,  causing  the  gun  to  fire  at 
the  exact  moment  when  there  is  no  propeller-blade  in 
front  of  the  muzzle.  In  the  hydraulic  t}pe  the  impulse 
of  the  cam  is  transmitted  to  the  gun  through  a  system 
of  copper  tubes  containing  oil  under  high  pressure. 
The  hydraulic  control,  known  as  the  Constantinisco, 
was  adopted  for  use  on  American  planes,  particularly 


282      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

the  De  Haviland  4,  which  carries  two  fixed  Marlins, 
each  firing  at  the  rate  of  650  shots  a  minute.  By  em- 
ploying the  maximum  rate  of  fire,  1,300  shots  could  be 
fired  in  a  minute  through  the  blades  of  the  propeller, 
which  would  make  1,600  revolutions  in  the  same  space 
of  time — without  the  blades  being  struck  by  a  single 
bullet. 

A  machine-gun  intended  for  aerial  use  must  be  ab- 
solutely reliable  in  operation.  If  a  gun  jams  on  the 
ground  there  is  usually  time  to  overhaul  it  or  to  re- 
place it.  Not  so  in  the  air.  There  a  jam  or  a  mal- 
function is  almost  certain  to  prove  disastrous,  if  not 
fatal,  to  the  gunner,  who  is  left  completely  at  the  mercy 
of  his  adversary.  An  aircraft  gun  must  also  function 
properly  in  any  position  in  which  it  is  likely  to  be 
placed  by  the  manoeuvres  of  the  plane.  Likewise,  an 
intensely  high  rate  of  fire  is  essential.  For  ground- 
work 500  shots  per  minute  is  reckoned  as  sufficient  for 
the  machine-gun,  for  a  higher  rate  of  fire  would  only 
result  in  several  bullets  hitting  the  same  man.  But  a 
considerably  higher  rate  of  fire — up  to  1,000  shots  a 
minute,  in  fact — is  demanded  of  aircraft  guns,  this 
being  necessitated  by  the  great  speed  at  which  air- 
planes move.  The  gunner,  remember,  can  train  on 
his  target  for  only  a  few  seconds,  sometimes  for  only 
a  fraction  of  a  second,  at  a  time,  and  it  is  essential, 
therefore,  that  he  should  have  at  his  command  the 
greatest  possible  volume  of  fire.  Do  you  appreciate 
that,  were  an  airplane  flying  parallel  to,  say,  a  high 
board  fence,  at  a  speed  of  100  miles  an  hour,  and 
shooting  at  right  angles  at  that  fence  with  a  gun  firing 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  283 

880  shots  a  minute,  the  bullet-marks  on  tlie  fence  would 
be  ten  feet  apart  ? 

Single-seater  machines  carry  only  fixed  guns, 
which  are  mounted  with  the  barrel  parallel  to  the  axis 
of  the  airplane.  These  guns,  which  are  synchronized 
so  as  to  shoot  through  the  propeller,  are  put  into  action 
by  a  trigger  on  the  "joy-stick"  of  the  plane  and  are 
aimed  by  pointing  the  entire  airplane  at  the  enemy. 
Flexible  guns  are  used  only  on  two-place  machines, 
being  operated  by  the  observer  or  gunner.  They  are 
carried  on  the  Universal  mount,  which  permits  of  the 
gun  being  pointed  in  any  direction.  All  of  the  flexible 
aircraft  guns  used  by  the  Allies  were  based  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  Lewis  gun,  the  invention  of  a  retired  ^\meri- 
can  army  officer.  Colonel  Isaac  Lewis.  The  chief  dif- 
ference between  the  ground  and  aircraft  models  is  that 
in  the  latter  the  cooling  radiator  is  eliminated,  as  air- 
craft guns  are  never  fired  continuously  for  any  length 
of  time. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  the 
Vickers  was  the  only  type  of  fixed  gun  in  use  on  either 
English  or  French  planes  and  was  used  on  all  the  planes 
which  General  Pershing  bought  in  France.  WTien  the  j 
Equipment  Division  of  the  Signal  Corps  faced  the  | 
machine-gun  situation  in  September,  191 7,  it  was 
alarmed  to  find  that  the  entire  production  of  Vickers 
in  the  United  States  had  already  been  contracted  for 
to  supply  the  imperative  requirements  of  the  infantr>'. 
There  was  another  gun  on  the  market  at  this  time, 
however — the  Marlin — and  toward  its  development 
for  aircraft  use  the  officers  of  the  Signal  Corps  bent 


284      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

all  their  energies.  Though  the  Marlin  was  adopted 
in  the  face  of  violent  opposition,  it  resulted  in  provid- 
ing sufficient  fixed  guns  to  arm  the  American  planes, 
the  wisdom  of  the  action  being  proved  by  the  fact 
that  up  to  the  time  of  the  Armistice  no  other  fixed 
guns  were  ready  for  delivery.  The  Marlin  has  been 
adapted  to  all  American-built  planes  which  carry 
fixed  or  synchronized  guns,  over  37,000  having  been 
produced  up  to  December,  1918.  This  gim  shoots  .30- 
calibre  ammunition  at  the  rate  of  600  to  650  shots  a 
minute  and  is  fed  from  a  belt  of  the  disintegrating 
metal-link  type.  In  December,  191 7,  the  first  order 
was  placed  for  Lewis  aircraft  guns,  over  39,000  of 
them  being  delivered  to  the  American  Air  Service 
within  the  following  twelvemonth.  A  notable  im- 
provement in  the  aircraft  model  of  the  Lewis  gun  was 
an  increase  in  the  depth  of  the  magazine  pan,  so  that 
each  magazine  holds  97  cartridges  instead  of  47  as 
previously.  The  Browning  aircraft  machine-gun  was 
just  coming  into  production  when  the  war  ended. 
This  weapon  embodies  the  best  features  of  every 
knowm  machine-gun  and  would  probably  have  replaced 
aU  other  types  in  use.  It  is  a  belt-fed  gun  of  the 
recoil  type — ^both  the  Marlin  and  Lewis  are  gas-op- 
erated— is  as  near  fool-proof  as  a  machine-gun  can  be 
made,  and  has  the  amazing  rate  of  fire  of  950  shots  a 
minute.  Of  it  the  inventor  is  said  to  have  remarked: 
"If  it  had  four  more  parts  it  could  play  a  tune;  if  it 
had  seven  more  parts  it  could  talk." 

The  ammunition  for  fixed  aircraft  guns,  such  as 
the  Marlin  and  Browning,  is  carried  in  belts  containing 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  285 

a  maximum  of  500  rounds.  In  the  earlier  days  of  the 
war  these  belts  were  of  woven  web,  but  it  was  found 
that  taking  care  of  them,  when  empty,  in  the  limited 
space  of  the  fuselage,  was  always  a  source  of  annoy- 
ance and  not  infrequently  a  source  of  danger  to  the 
aviator.  To  remedy  this  a  belt  was  designed  and  fur- 
nished to  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  which 
consisted  of  small  metallic  links  held  together  by  the 
cartridges  themselves.  As  the  gun  fires,  the  links  drop 
apart,  chutes  being  provided  so  that  they  fall  clear  of 
the  airplane.  Another  minor  though  interesting  fea- 
ture of  aircraft  armament  is  the  small  electric  heater 
which  is  now  provided  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the 
gun  warm  and  thus  preventing  the  oil  from  congealing 
in  high  altitudes. 

Efforts  to  make  the  bursts  of  fire  from  aircraft 
guns  of  maximum  effectiveness  have  led  to  the  develop- 
ment of  three  distinct  types  of  ammunition — tracer, 
armor-piercing,  and  incendiary.  The  tracer  t}pe  of 
ammunition  was  developed  to  assist  the  gunner  in  cor- 
recting his  aim,  and  is  equally  useful  by  night  or  day, 
as  the  course  of  the  bullet  can  be  traced  by  a  trail  of 
white  smoke  in  the  daytime  and  by  a  bright  spark  at 
night.  Armor-piercing  ammunition  has  a  projectile 
consisting  of  a  hard  steel  core  with  a  soft  nickel  casing. 
The  object  of  this  ammunition,  as  its  name  implies,  is 
to  pierce  any  of  the  metallic  parts  of  an  enemy  plane, 
particularly  the  gasoline-tanks  or  the  engine,  the  soft 
nickel  casing  acting  as  a  lubricant  and  preventing  the 
steel  core  from  glancing  off.  Incendiary  ammunition 
is  loaded  with  yellow  phosphorus.     When  the  cartridge 


286      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

is  fired  the  rifling  in  the  barrel  of  the  machine-gun 
opens  a  small  hole  in  the  case  of  the  projectile,  thus 
permitting  the  phosphorus  to  come  in  contact  with  the 
air,  whereupon  it  immediately  ignites  and  sets  fire  to 
any  inflammable  part  of  a  plane  which  it  may  hit.  It 
is  customar}^  to  load  the  belts  or  pans  of  aircraft 
machine-gims  with  these  three  types  of  special  ammu- 
nition in  a  certain  sequence,  depending  upon  the  no- 
tions of  the  pilot  himself.  A  sequence  commonly  used 
was,  first,  the  tracer  cartridge,  which  assisted  the  gun- 
ner in  correcting  his  aim;  next,  two  or  three  armor- 
piercing  cartridges,  in  the  hope  that  they  would  pierce 
the  enemy's  gasoline-tank  or  damage  his  engine;  and 
then  one  or  two  incendiary  cartridges,  which  if  the 
gasoline-tank  was  pierced  would  ignite  the  leaking 
gasoline  and  set  fire  to  the  machine.  This  sequence 
was  continued  throughout  the  loading  of  the  belt  or 
pan. 

Another  branch  of  sky  warfare  which  was  being 
rapidly  developed  was  aerial  bombing.  Though  bombs 
of  a  sort  were  used  by  Italian  aviators  against  the 
Arabs  during  the  Libyan  campaign,  and  by  American 
soldiers  of  fortune  serving  with  the  Villista  forces  in 
northern  Mexico,  these  attempts  were  so  amateurish 
and  ineffective  as  to  merit  no  serious  consideration. 
It  may  be  said  that  the  first  bombs  dropped  from  an 
aircraft  in  the  history  of  warfare  were  those  loosed 
from  the  German  Zeppelin  which  raided  Antwerp  in 
August,  1 91 4.  I  speak  with  a  certain  personal  knowl- 
edge of  my  subject,  for  the  first  bomb  dropped  on  the 
night  in  question  exploded  less  than  a  hundred  yards 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  2S7 

from  the  window  in  which  I  was  sitting,  demolishing  a 
house  and  killing  three  persons. 

Many  people  seem  to  be  under  the  impression 
that  bomb-dropping  is  about  as  simple  as  dropping  a 
brick  out  of  an  upper-story  window  onto  the  head  of  a 
man  beneath.  This  is  not  so.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
is  extremely  difficult  to  drop  a  bomb  from  an  airplane 
so  that  it  will  hit  a  desired  target,  for,  owing  to  the 
speed  at  which  the  plane  travels,  the  bomb  when  re- 
leased does  not  drop  to  the  ground  vertically,  but  falls 
in  a  parabolic  curve,  something  like  that  described  by 
a  man  who  jumps  from  a  street-car  when  it  is  in  mo- 
tion. For  this  reason  the  bomb  must  be  released  some 
moments  before  the  airplane  is  directly  over  the  tar- 
get, the  ability  of  an  aviator  to  determine  the  exact 
moment  to  pull  his  release  mechanism  being  acquired 
only  through  long  experience.  Bomb-sights  have  re- 
cently been  perfected,  however,  which  have  largely 
eliminated  this  element  of  chance.  These  sights  have 
numerical  scales  mathematically  calculated,  so  that 
when  adjusted  for  height,  air-speed  as  shown  by  the 
air-speed  indicator,  and  calculated  speed  of  the  wind 
with  or  against  the  airplane,  two  sighting  points  are 
moved  into  such  a  position  that  if  the  bomb  is  dropped 
when  the  desired  target  comes  in  line  with  them,  it 
will  reach  its  objective — ^provided,  of  course,  the  avia- 
tor has  made  his  calculations  and  set  his  sights  cor- 
rectly. All  this  sounds  rather  complicated,  I  know, 
and  it  is  complicated,  but  if  the  pilot  uses  the  sight 
correctly  his  chances  of  hitting  his  target  are  enor- 
mously increased.     All  bombing  planes  are  fitted  with 


288      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

quick-release  mechanisms,  which  hold  the  bombs  firmly 
in  a  vertical  or  horizontal  position,  according  to  the 
type  and  size  carried.  On  the  smaller  bombing  planes, 
such  as  the  De  Haviland  4,  the  release  mechanisms  are 
placed  underneath  the  fuselage  or  the  lower  wings,  but 
on  the  large  t}q3es,  such  as  the  Handley-Page,  the 
bombs  are  carried  inside  the  fuselage.  By  a  quick 
jerk  of  a  lever  the  pilot  releases  his  bomb  precisely  as 
a  hangman,  by  jerking  a  lever,  drops  the  trap  on  which 
the  condemned  man  stands.  And  the  consequences 
are  usually  much  the  same  in  both  cases. 

There  were  three  distinct  types  of  bombs — demo- 
lition, fragmentation,  and  incendiary — in  use  by  the 
American  Air  Service  when  the  war  ended.  Ameri- 
can demolition  bombs  are  made  in  50,  100,  250,  500, 
and  1,000  pound  weights,  the  100  and  250  pound  sizes 
being  used  chiefly.  These  bombs  consist  of  a  light 
steel  casing  filled  with  T  N  T  or  other  high  explosive 
and  a  detonator  separated  from  the  explosive  by  a 
safety-pin.  When  the  bomb  is  released  from  the  air- 
plane the  safety-pin  is  automatically  pulled  out,  per- 
mitting the  detonator  to  slide  down  into  such  a  position 
that  the  bomb  will  explode  the  instant  it  strikes  the 
ground.  These  demolition  bombs  are  primarily  de- 
signed for  use  against  buildings,  fortifications,  and 
other  heavy  structures  where  a  high-explosive  charge 
is  desired.  Had  the  war  continued  long  enough  to 
have  permitted  of  our  aviators  letting  loose  a  few 
1 ,000-pound  bombs  on  some  of  the  trans-Rhine  strong- 
holds, the  Germans  would  have  learned  what  the  San 
Francisco  earthquake  was  like.     Fragmentation  bombs 


Pliitlnfirapli  by  Signal  Corps.  U.  S.  A. 

BOMBING  PRACTICE. 

An  illustration  of  how  the  enemy's  lines  of  communication  can  be  destroyed  by  bombs  dropped  from 

airplanes. 


Pholoj^raph  by  Signal  Corp,.  U .  S.  .1. 

EC.GS  OK   DEATH. 
.Sit.uhins  dummy  bombs  to  the  rack  of  a  bombins  plane 


PIGEONS   HAVE  BEEN'  REPEATEDLY  USED  WITH  SUCCESS  FROM  BOTH  AIRPLANES 

AND  BALLOONS. 


Photograph  by  U.  S.  Air  Serute. 

THE  EYE  LV  THE  SKY;  AN  AIRPLANE  CAMERA  IX  OPERATION. 

Durin?  the  oflensive  in  the  ArRonne  the  .\merican  Photographic  Sections  mado  100,000 
aerofjhotographs  of  battle  Unci  in  four  days. 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  289 

are  considerably  smaller,  the  size  most  frequentl}'  used 
weighing  twenty  pounds.  They  have  a  thicker  case 
than  the  demolition  bombs  and  are  constructed  so  as 
to  explode  a  few  inches  above  the  ground.  These 
bombs  are  for  use  against  troops  in  trenches  or  in  the 
open  and  depend  upon  the  scattering  of  the  fragments 
for  their  effect.  Incendiary  bombs  weigh  about  fifty 
pounds  and  contain  charges  of  oil  emulsion,  thermite, 
and  metallic  sodium,  which  burn  for  several  minutes 
with  the  intense  heat  of  a  plumber's  blow-lamp.  They 
are  used  against  ammunition-depots,  storehouses,  and 
other  structures  of  inflammable  construction,  the  pur- 
pose of  the  metallic  sodium  being  to  discourage  the 
efforts  of  any  one  who  attempts  to  put  out  the  fire,  as 
it  explodes  violently  when  water  is  poured  on  it. 

Comparatively  few  persons  realize,  I  suppose,  that 
fireworks  almost  identical  with  those  we  used  to  set  off 
on  the  Fourth  of  July  in  the  good  old  days  before  the 
safe-and-sane  laws  went  into  effect  are  utilized  in 
aerial  warfare  and  form  a  valuable  and  often  vital 
asset  for  the  aviator.  Most  of  these  aerial  pyrotech- 
nics resemble  in  their  effects  the  colored  lights  and  the 
Roman  candles  of  our  childhood  and  are  used  for  sig- 
nalling from  the  airplane  to  the  ground  and  vice  versa, 
or  from  one  plane  to  others  in  the  air  at  the  same  time. 
For  this  purpose  every  active  service  airplane  carries 
one  or  more  signalling  pistols,  depending  upon  the 
number  of  the  crew.  These  rather  formidable-appear- 
ing weapons,  which  look  not  unlike  the  big-barrelled 
affairs  the  pirates  were  wont  to  carr}-  in  their  scarlet 
sashes,  are  similar  to  the  Very  pistols  used  in  the 


290      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

trenches;  their  ammunition  consists  of  cartridges  very- 
similar  to  shotgun  shells,  but  larger,  containing  stars  of 
various  colors,  like  those  in  Roman  candles,  and  the 
necessary  powder  charge  to  eject  the  stars.  Three 
colors,  red,  green,  and  white,  are  furnished,  the  color 
of  the  star  being  indicated  on  the  base  of  the  cartridge, 
which  is  also  serrated  in  such  a  manner  that  the  aviator 
can  tell  the  color  by  touch  when  flying  at  night.  By- 
different  combinations  of  these  colors  an  almost  endless 
variety  of  signals  can  be  conveyed.  One  of  the  strang- 
est and  most  fascinating  night  sights  on  the  Western 
Front  was  to  see  these  countless  stars,  scarlet,  yellow, 
emerald,  shot  from  invisible  airplanes,  drifting  across 
the  purple  velvet  of  the  sky.  The  stars  are  clearly 
visible  in  the  daytime  and  were  used  for  many  pur- 
poses, such  as  indicating  the  position  of  enemy  troops, 
the  presence  of  hostile  aircraft,  requests  for  assistance 
from  other  planes,  and  as  a  means  of  transmitting 
orders  from  the  leader  of  a  squadron  to  other  machines 
in  formation.  At  night  the  signalling  pistol  is  of  ex- 
ceptional value  in  aiding  the  aviator  to  effect  a  safe 
landing.  When  approaching  his  home-field  the  pilot 
fires  a  light  of  a  prearranged  color,  and  if  answered  by 
a  light  of  a  proper  color  from  the  ground,  he  knows 
that  the  field  is  clear  of  obstructions  and  other  machines 
and  safe  to  land  on.  Pilots  have  also  used  their  signal- 
ling pistols  for  firing  into  their  gasoline-tanks  and  thus 
setting  fire  to  their  machines  when  forced  to  land  in 
enemy  territory.  There  are  also  a  few  cases  on  record 
of  the  pilot  being  able  to  hold  enemy  soldiers  at  bay 
with  his  signalling  pistol  long  enough  to  prevent  them 
from  extinguishing  the  fire. 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  291 

Night-fl}mg  is  one  of  the  most  hazardous  duties 
of  the  aviator,  the  chief  danger  being  in  the  difficulty 
of  making  a  safe  landing.  Night-landing  fields  are,  as 
a  rule,  well  illuminated  by  flood-lights,  but  near  the 
front  this  was  not  always  advisable  or  safe,  and,  owing 
to  the  difficulty  of  judging  the  distance  of  the  machine 
above  the  ground  in  the  darkness,  accidents  were  by 
no  means  uncommon.  In  order  to  minimize  this  dan- 
ger there  was  developed  the  "wing-tip  flare,"  which 
consists  of  a  small  cylinder  of  magnesium  material  in 
a  metallic  holder,  one  of  which  is  fitted  under  each 
lower  wing  of  the  plane.  The  flares  are  ignited  by  an 
electric  current  and  are  controlled  by  push-buttons, 
one  for  each  flare,  in  the  pilot's  cockpit.  In  making  a 
night-landing,  when  the  pilot  judges  the  plane  to  be 
but  a  few  feet  above  the  ground,  he  presses  one  of  the 
buttons.  The  flare  instantly  ignites  and  for  about 
fifty  seconds  bums  with  a  light  of  approximately 
20,000  candle-power,  which,  reflected  on  the  ground  by 
the  under  surface  of  the  wing,  enables  the  pilot  to 
judge  his  distance  and  effect  his  landing  without 
trouble. 

The  requirements  of  night-bombing  have  led  to 
the  development  of  a  new  and  ver>^  interesting  form  of 
pyrotechnic  known  as  the  "airplane  flare."  This  flare, 
which  weighs  thirty-five  pounds,  is  contained  in  a 
cylindrical  case  of  sheet-iron  about  four  feet  long  and 
five  inches  in  diameter.  The  flare  consists  of  an  iUu- 
minating  charge,  capable  of  giving  32,000  candle- 
power  for  approximately  ten  minutes,  which  is  attached 
to  a  silk  parachute   twenty  feet   in  diameter.     The 


292      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

cylinder  is  attached  to  the  airplane  by  a  light  release 
mechanism  similar  to  those  used  for  holding  bombs. 
On  the  end  of  the  cylinder  is  a  small  pinwheel,  which, 
revolved  by  the  rush  of  air  as  the  released  cylinder 
hurtles  downward,  ignites  the  illuminating  charge  and 
at  the  same  time  detonates  a  small  black-powder 
charge  sufficient  to  eject  the  flare  and  its  tightly  rolled 
parachute  from  the  case.  The  parachute  immediately 
opens  and  the  burning  flare  descends  very  slowly,  illu- 
minating a  large  area  of  territory  underneath  almost 
as  brightly  as  though  it  were  day.  These  flares  were 
used  particularly  for  night-bombing  raids,  the  pilots 
thus  being  enabled  to  illuminate  the  objectives  so  that 
they  could  accurately  drop  their  bombs.  On  several 
occasions,  when  raiding  airplanes  were  met  by  heavy 
fire  from  the  enemy's  antiaircraft  batteries,  it  was 
found  that  the  light  from  these  flares  was  so  dazzling 
as  to  make  it  impossible  for  the  gunners  to  take  accu- 
rate aim.  So  wide  is  the  radius  illuminated  by  these 
flares,  and  so  intense  their  light,  that  it  has  been  found 
possible  by  theu:  aid  to  obtain  aero  photographs  of 
exceUent  detail  even  on  the  darkest  nights.  I  can  per- 
sonaUy  vouch  for  the  amazing  brilliancy  of  these 
flares,  for  I  saw  one  dropped  by  the  Germans  during 
one  of  their  air-raids  on  Paris  in  the  surmner  of  191 8. 
It  apparently  landed  on  the  Pont  Alexandre  III  or  in 
the  Seine,  yet  both  banks  of  the  river,  the  facades  of 
the  Grand  and  the  Petit  Palais,  and  the  Champ  Ely- 
sees  for  several  blocks  in  both  directions  were  almost 
as  bright  as  though  illuminated  by  a  midday  sun. 
Standing  alone  in  the  Cours  de  la  Reine,  I  had  the 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  293 

feeling  that  the  Kaiser's  eye  was  on  me  and  that,  hav- 
ing discovered  me,  he  intended  to  drop  upon  me  one 
of  his  steel  visiting-cards.  The  brilliancy  and  unex- 
pectedness of  the  glare  reminded  me  of  boyhood  days 
in  the  Thousand  Islands,  when  the  captain  of  the 
Islajid  Watiderer,  making  his  nightly  excursions  amid 
the  clustered,  cottage-dotted  isles,  took  keen  delight 
in  suddenly  turning  the  beam  of  his  powerful  search- 
light upon  some  affectionate  pair  love-making  on  the 
shore. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  airplane  is  the  eye  of 
the  army,  and  it  is  equally  true  that  the  camera  is  the 
eye  of  the  airplane.  Nothing  more  strikingly  empha- 
sizes the  enormous  importance  attached  to  pictures 
taken  from  the  air,  showing  the  progress  of  the  opera- 
tions, than  the  fact  that,  during  the  offensive  in  the 
Argonne,  the  American  photographic  sections  made 
one  hundred  thousand  aero  photographs  of  the  hattle-lines 
in  Jour  days. 

As  aerial  photography  was  an  entirely  new  mili- 
tary subject  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  in  1914,  there 
were  no  precedents  to  act  as  guides,  nor  was  there  any 
special  apparatus  in  existence.  Consequently,  the  en- 
tire art  of  aerial  photography  was  developed  and 
brought  to  its  present  state  of  perfection  by  the  Allies 
under  the  incentive  of  military  necessity  and  after  the 
war  had  begun.  As  trench  warfare  made  aerial  pho- 
tography not  only  important  but  \ital  to  the  success 
of  any  proposed  operations,  the  changes  and  improve- 
ments in  the  apparatus  employed  came  with  incredible 


294      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

rapidity,  practices  employed  one  week  becoming  obso- 
lete the  next.  By  April,  191 7,  the  British  Air  Service 
alone  had  issued  approximately  280,000  prints,  and 
this  number  was  equalled,  if  not  surpassed,  by  the 
French  Section  Photographique.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  war  it  was  possible  to  fly  at  low  altitudes  and  secure 
reasonably  satisfactory  pictures  with  such  cameras, 
plates,  and  lenses  as  were  then  available.  But  as  anti- 
aircraft artillery  was  developed,  the  planes  were  forced 
to  climb  higher  to  keep  out  of  their  range,  and  owing 
to  the  necessity  for  longer-focus  lenses,  special  plates, 
and  color  filters  to  overcome  the  haze  existing  between 
the  camera  and  the  earth,  photography  at  these  high 
altitudes  became  increasingly  difficult. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  the  Brit- 
ish, French,  and  Italians  were  using  plates  exclusively 
and  we  followed  their  lead,  it  not  being  until  some 
months  later  that  we  turned  to  films.  At  this  time  the 
British  were  using  4x5  plates,  and  cameras  equipped 
with  lenses  of  from  8  to  12  inch  focus.  Instead  of 
making  contact  prints  from  these  negatives,  enlarge- 
ments 6^  X  8J^  were  made  on  glossy  paper,  it  being 
claimed  that  this  process  gave  greater  control  in 
printing.  Whether  the  British  system  really  had  all 
the  advantages  claimed  for  it  is  open  to  question,  but 
in  any  event  we  adopted  it  and  followed  it  through 
the  first  nine  months  of  the  war.  The  great  masters 
of  photography  in  Rochester  were  by  no  means  con- 
tent to  let  another  nation  set  the  pace  for  the  United 
States,  however,  and  in  January,  1918,  a  concern  in 
that  city  completed  a  very  remarkable  aero  camera, 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  295 

radically  different  from  anything  which  had  been  seen 
in  Europe  up  to  that  time,  which  was  promptly 
adopted  by  the  War  Department.  This  camera, 
which  took  an  i8-cm.  by  24-cm.  picture,  had  a  focal 
length  of  20  inches,  held  a  roll  of  film  on  which  100 
successive  exposures  could  be  made,  and  weighed  only 
35  pounds.  Its  most  novel  feature  was  the  "vacuum 
back,"  consisting  of  a  perforated  sheet  which  extended 
across  the  top  of  the  chamber  and  over  the  face  of 
which  the  fibn  passed.  A  slight  air-suction,  produced 
by  a  Venturi  tube  placed  where  it  would  catch  the 
rush  of  air  past  the  plane,  served  to  hold  the  film 
absolutely  flat — for  the  slightest  curvature  of  its  surface 
would  play  havoc  with  the  perspective  of  a  picture 
taken  from  a  height,  say,  of  10,000  feet.  This  ingenious 
instrument  was  driven  by  an  electric  motor  which 
changed  the  film  and  automatically  set  the  shutter, 
the  observer  having  only  to  start  the  machinery-  going 
and  regulate  its  speed  according  to  the  rate  of  travel 
of  the  airplane  in  order  to  obtain  a  series  of  pictures 
forming  a  continuous  photograph  of  the  territory  over 
which  the  machine  was  passing. 

Another  picturesque  phase  of  aerial  photography 
of  which  the  public  was  permitted  to  know  next  to  noth- 
ing was  the  so-called  ''gun  camera,"  the  invention  of 
Thornton  Pickard,  of  Altringham,  England.  This 
camera,  which  was  designed  for  the  purpose  of  training 
aerial  gunners,  imitated  as  closely  as  possible  a  Marlin 
aircraft  machine-gun,  and  in  order  to  make  a  picture  it 
was  necessary-  for  the  operator  to  go  through  the  same 
movements  as  in  firing  a  Marlin  gun.     The  picture 


296      THE  ARIMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

was  made  through  a  circular  graticule  synchronized 
with  the  sight  on  the  fixed  machine-gun,  so  if  the  film, 
upon  being  developed,  showed  that  the  gunner  had 
scored  a  "hit"  with  the  camera,  he  would  have  been 
equally  successful  with  an  actual  machine-gun.  The 
gun  cameras  as  developed  in  the  United  States  were  of 
two  kinds:  one,  using  a  regular  Brownie  film,  took  one 
picture  each  time  the  trigger  was  pulled;  the  other, 
which  was  virtually  a  motion-picture  camera  so  con- 
structed as  to  exactly  replace  the  magazine  on  a  Lewis 
gun,  gave  a  "burst"  of  exposure  with  a  rapidity  equal- 
ling that  of  a  machine-gun  firing  a  burst  of  shots,  and 
was  used  for  training  aviators  in  the  handling  of  their 
flexibly  mounted  Lewis  guns.  The  resulting  film,  or 
bromide  print,  consisted  of  a  string  of  silhouettes  of 
the  supposed  enemy  plane,  each  with  an  image  of  the 
gun-sights  superimposed  to  show  where  the  gun  was 
held,  with  reference  to  the  target,  at  the  instant  the 
picture  was  taken. 

The  enormous  numbers  of  pictures  taken  from  the 
skies  necessitated  a  corresponding  development  and 
manufacture  of  travelling  dark  rooms,  seventy-five 
complete  units  of  these  machines  being  built  and 
shipped  overseas.  These  consisted  of  mobile  photo 
laboratories,  having  all  the  equipment  necessary  for 
the  rapid  production  of  prints  in  the  field,  for  when 
important  operations  are  in  progress  it  is  imperative 
that  the  aero  photographs  reach  the  staff  at  the  earli- 
est possible  moment  after  they  are  taken.  The  dark 
rooms,  which  were  mounted  on  trucks,  were  equipped 
with  apparatus  for  generating  the  current  used  in  the 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  297 

lamps  and  cnlargers,  while  trailers  were  fitted  with 
sinks,  tanks,  enlarging  cameras,  and  other  necessary 
photographic  apparatus.  The  fact  should  not  be  over- 
looked, moreover,  that  provision  had  to  be  made  for 
training  the  vast  and  for  the  most  part  inexperienced 
personnel  of  the  photographic  sections  in  the  countless 
new  and  peculiar  phases  of  taking  pictures  from  the 
skies. 

In  considering  the  development  of  military  aero- 
nautics it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  maximum 
altitudes  attained  by  airplanes  increased  enormously 
during  the  war.  In  19 14  the  record  for  altitude  was 
26,246  feet,  or  slightly  less  than  five  miles.  By  Janu- 
ary, 1919,  the  record  had  been  raised  to  30,500  feet,  an 
increase  of  more  than  four-fifths  of  a  mile.  In  191 5  the 
Western  Front  pilots  worked  at  7,000  feet  without  fear 
of  attack  from  the  ground,  and  few  machines  flew  at 
heights  of  more  than  10,000  feet.  In  fact,  the  ''ceil- 
ing" with  the  early  equipment  was  about  12,000  feet. 
In  the  closing  months  of  the  war,  however,  as  a  re- 
sult of  the  development  of  the  antiaircraft  artillery, 
it  became  necessary  for  aviators  to  climb  to  15,000 
feet  over  the  enemy  lines,  and  tactics  of  the  air  made 
that  machine  safest  which  could  fly  highest. 

Now  it  may  not  have  occurred  to  you  that  the 
higher  you  ascend  the  greater  becomes  the  decrease  in 
atmospheric  pressure.  At  19,000  feet  the  pressure  of 
the  atmosphere  is  one-half  the  pressure  at  sea-level. 
That  means  that  a  given  amount  of  air  in  the  lungs  of 
an  aviator  flying  at  that  height  gives  only  half  the 
oxygen  that  it  would  were  he  on  the  ground.     It  is, 


298      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

then,  the  lack  of  oxygen,  and  not,  as  many  suppose, 
the  low  pressure  itself,  which  makes  men  weak  and 
slow  of  action  at  high  altitudes.  Though  these  facts 
have  been  determined  by  medical  research,  it  is  a 
curious  phase  of  the  flyer's  psychology  that  most  avia- 
tors laugh  at  the  idea.  Yet  any  one  who  has  crossed 
the  Rockies  or  ascended  one  of  the  Alpine  peaks  by 
funicular  has  noticed  that  as  the  altitude  increases  the 
breathing  becomes  quicker  and  deeper,  the  heart  beats 
faster  and  faster.  But  though  the  pilot  may,  as  he 
asserts,  continue  to  feel  perfectly  fit  and  well,  he  is 
not  as  efficient  as  when  near  the  ground.  His  reac- 
tions become  slower,  he  is  less  prompt  to  judge  dis- 
tances, to  aim  his  guns,  to  fire,  to  manoeuvre  his  plane 
— and  this  despite  the  fact  that  he  is  usually  quite 
unconscious  of  any  impairment  of  his  faculties.  He 
will  feel  dizzy  but  perfectly  happy — autointoxication, 
I  believe  the  doctors  call  it — whereas,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  has  lost  his  judgment;  and  if  he  attempts  to 
stay  at  these  altitudes  he  will  gradually  pass  into  a 
condition  of  partial  and  sometimes  total  unconscious- 
ness, lose  control  of  his  machine,  and  come  crashing 
to  the  earth. 

The  imperative  necessity  of  maintaining  flyers  at 
the  highest  possible  efficiency  was  brought  home  to 
the  aviation  authorities  through  studying  the  reports 
of  Enghsh  air-casualties  during  the  first  year  of  the 
war.  The  records  divided  these  as  follows:  2  per  cent 
were  due  to  the  enemy,  8  per  cent  were  due  to  the 
plane,  and  90  per  cent  were  due  to  the  men,  which 
clearly  indicated  that  something  was  radically  wrong 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE  SKY  299 

with  the  personnel  and  that  prompt  action  was  neces- 
sary. A  thorough  study  of  the  situation  disclosed  the 
fact  that  practically  all  of  the  flying  personnel  was 
suffering  from  what  is  known  to  scientists  as  oxygen 
fatigue,  caused  by  flying  for  many  hours  a  day  at  high 
altitudes  where  there  was  not  enough  oxygen  to  feed 
the  body.  As  a  result  of  this  discovery,  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Dreyer,  of  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps, 
designed  an  oxygen  apparatus  for  use  by  the  British 
air  forces,  the  manufacture  of  which  was  immediately 
begun  in  Paris.  So  pressing  was  the  need  for  these 
apparatus  that  an  automobile  was  kept  waiting  at  the 
plant  where  they  were  being  manufactured  to  rush 
each  one  to  the  front  as  soon  as  it  was  finished. 

An  original  model  of  this  apparatus  was  brought 
to  the  United  States  shortly  after  we  entered  the  war, 
but  as  it  was  made  entirely  by  hand,  it  had  to  be  re- 
designed to  meet  our  manufacturing  conditions.  The 
perfected  oxygen  equipment,  as  used  in  the  American 
Air  Service,  consists  of  a  small  tank,  or  tanks,  accord- 
ing to  the  amount  of  oxygen  carried,  a  pressure  de- 
vice, a  face-mask  covering  the  mouth  and  nose,  and  a 
tube  connecting  the  mask  with  the  oxygen  reservoir. 
The  American  mask  has  combined  with  it  the  inter- 
phone whereby  the  pilot  and  observer  can  converse 
with  each  other  while  in  the  air  and,  in  certain  cases, 
the  receiver  of  the  radio  telephone.  In  May,  1918,  six 
complete  apparatus  were  sent  overseas  by  special  mes- 
senger to  be  tried  out  under  battle  conditions,  and 
when  the  war  ended  5,000  had  been  manufactured  and 
accepted.     All  American  military'  planes  flying  at  an 


300      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

altitude  of  over  10,000  feet  are  now  fitted  for  the  in- 
stallation of  oxygen  equipment.  This  includes  day- 
bombing,  pursuit,  and  chase  planes,  and  a  percentage 
of  night-bombing  and  observation  machines.  So  much 
importance  was  attached  by  the  military  authorities 
to  supplying  our  flying-men  with  oxygen  that  a  special 
oxygen  division  was  organized  and  sent  to  France  for 
the  purpose  of  installing  the  apparatus  in  the  planes. 
Yet,  as  I  have  previously  remarked,  the  flyers  them- 
selves persist  in  regarding  the  apparatus,  probably 
because  of  the  discomfort  involved  in  wearing  it,  with 
amused  scepticism. 

Of  all  the  inventions  which  have  sprung  from  the 
war,  none  is  more  amazing,  to  my  way  of  thinking, 
than  the  radio  telephone.  Think  of  standing  on  the 
ground  and  holding  a  conversation  in  a  normal  tone  of 
voice  with  an  aviator  so  high  in  the  sky  that  you  can- 
not see  his  airplane  with  the  naked  eye.  Think  of  it ! 
Before  we  entered  the  war,  any  one  save  a  handful  of 
enthusiastic  scientists  would  have  ridiculed  such  a 
suggestion,  yet  to-day,  at  any  one  of  a  score  of  flying- 
fields,  you  can  sit  at  an  office  desk  and  converse  with 
aviators  in  the  clouds  as  easily  as  though  you  were  sit' 
ting  opposite  them  at  a  dinner-table. 

The  enormous  advantage  which  such  an  invention 
would  give  to  the  army  possessing  it  was  early  recog- 
nized by  certain  electrical  engineers  and  a  few  scientifi- 
cally minded  officers  of  the  Signal  Corps,  and,  as  a 
result  of  their  enthusiasm,  before  the  first  contingent 
sailed  for  France  work  had  been  begun  on  the  develop- 


Ph(>tof,raph  hy  Signal  Corps.  U.  .V.  .1. 

RADIO  TELEPHONE  APPARATUS  IX  OPERATION  ON  AN  AIRPLANE. 

The  pilot  and  ol)server  are  able  to  talk  to  each  other  throufih  the  same  instrument  by  means  of  which 
ihey  communicate  \vi(h  the  ground. 


PRESIDENT  WILSON  TALKING  WITH  AN  AVIATOR  IN  THE  CLOUDS  BV  MEANS  OF 
THE  RADIO  TELEPHONE. 


A  RAXGE-FINDER  FOR  ASCERTAINING ;  TIIF.  ALTITl'DI 
AIRPLANES. 


WD  SPEED  OF 


One  of  the  most  remarkable  inventions  of  the  war.  This  instrument  not  only  ascertains  the  altitude 
and  position  of  an  airplane  but  by  means  of  an  electric  connection  automatically  sets  the  sights  on 
the  anti-aircraft  gun. 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE   SKY  301 

ment  of  a  radio-telephone  set  for  airplanes.  There  is 
no  necessity  of  recounting  the  innumerable  experiments 
and  heart-breaking  failures  before  the  first  real  suc- 
cesses were  obtained.  So  far  as  the  radio  part  of  the 
problem  was  concerned,  a  solution  was  had  in  a  com- 
paratively short  time.  But  working  this  apparatus  in 
a  swift-moving  and  terrifically  noisy  airplane  was  quite 
a  different  matter,  it  was  quickly  discovered,  from 
working  it  under  ordinary  conditions  on  the  ground, 
the  roar  of  the  engine  and  the  rushing  air  making  it 
impossible  to  hear  one's  own  voice,  much  less  the  weak 
signals  of  the  receiver.  One  of  the  first  problems  to 
be  solved,  therefore,  was  to  design  a  head-set  which 
would  exclude  these  noises  while  at  the  same  time  per- 
mitting the  voice  of  the  telephone  to  be  heard.  The 
answer  was  found  in  a  form  of  aviator's  helmet  fitting 
the  head  so  closely  as  to  exclude  virtually  all  extrane- 
ous sounds  save  those  coming  through  telephone-re- 
ceivers mserted  in  the  helmet  so  as  to  fit  the  ears.  No 
sooner  was  this  problem  solved,  however,  than  another 
one  demanded  solution.  A  means  had  been  devised 
for  protecting  the  receivers  from  outside  noises — but 
how  about  the  transmitter?  Every  one  knows  how 
sensitive  the  ordinary  telephone-transmitter  is  to  ex- 
traneous sounds,  so  it  does  not  require  much  imagina- 
tion to  picture  how  impossible  it  would  be  for  the 
aviator  to  make  his  voice  heard  in  a  transmitter  along- 
side a  200  horse-power  airplane  engine.  But  a  brilliant 
series  of  experiments,  conducted  largely  by  Mr.  J.  P. 
Minton,  of  the  Western  Electric  Company,  resulted  in 
a  form  of  telephone-transmitter  or  microphone  which 


302      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

possessed  the  remarkable  quality  of  being  insensible  to 
engine  and  wind  noises  and  at  the  same  time  highly 
responsive  to  the  tones  of  the  voice.  With  these  two 
elements  in  hand  it  was  thought  that  the  problem  was 
solved,  but  three  more  months  of  unremitting  work 
were  required  to  perfect  the  apparatus  to  a  state 
where  it  was  practicable  for  use  by  others  than  ex- 
perts. At  last  everything  was  ready,  however,  and  in 
December,  191 7,  the  officials  of  the  Aircraft  Produc- 
tion Board  and  the  joint  Army  and  Navy  Technical 
Boards  announced  that  they  would  witness  an  ex- 
hibition of  the  apparatus  at  the  Moraine  Flying-Field 
at  Dayton.  Two  days  before  the  date  set  for  the 
demonstration  a  group  of  the  engineers  and  mechanics 
who  had  been  working  over  the  problem  almost  night 
and  day  during  the  preceding  six  months  descended, 
with  many  cases  of  paraphernalia,  on  the  Ohio  town. 
Only  the  enthusiasts  who  for  the  preceding  half-year 
had  spent  their  days  working  over  the  problem  and 
their  nights  dreaming  of  it  believed  that  the  exhibi- 
tion would  prove  successful.  Every  one  else  was 
sceptical.  The  plan  was  to  have  two  planes,  both 
carrying  radio  sets,  in  the  air  at  the  same  time,  while 
the  visiting  officials  listened  in  at  a  ground-station 
located  on  the  top  of  a  near-by  hill.  That  night  the 
inventors  and  their  assistants  congregated  in  a  room 
of  the  hotel  where  they  were  staying  and  worked  out 
a  scenario  and  held  a  rehearsal  of  the  morrow's  pro- 
gramme. A  famous  electrical  expert  represented  one 
plane  and  a  young  engineer  represented  the  other, 
while  the  inventors,  sitting  in  the  middle  of  the  room, 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE   SKY  303 

gave  them  their  orders  and  sent  them  sailmg  over 
beds,  chairs,  and  tables  as  it  was  hoped  their  planes 
would  manoeuvre  in  the  clouds  the  next  day.  No  one 
slept  very  well  that  night.  The  morning  was  cold 
and  dismal,  in  keeping  with  the  spirits  of  all  con- 
cerned. Upon  the  arrival  of  the  exalted  ones,  among 
whom  were  several  of  the  foremost  scientists  and  in- 
ventors of  America,  they  were  shown  the  apparatus 
installed  in  the  two  planes  and  were  told  what  it  was 
expected  to  do.  They  were  then  escorted  up  to  the 
little  station  on  the  hill,  where  a  loud-speaking  receiver 
had  been  connected  with  the  wireless  apparatus,  so 
that  all  could  hear  without  the  use  of  head-sets.  The 
planes  left  the  ground,  and  after  what  seemed  an  inter- 
minable length  of  time,  there  came  from  the  receiver 
the  first  faint  sounds  which  indicated  that  they  were 
ready  to  perform.  The  officials,  with  their  coat-collars 
about  their  ears,  appeared  only  mildly  interested  and 
several  gave  unmistakable  signs  of  being  bored.  Sud- 
denly, without  the  slightest  warning,  out  of  the  horn 
of  the  loud-speaker  came  the  words:  ^^ Hello,  ground- 
station  !  This  is  Plane  Number  One  speaking.  Do  you 
get  me  all  right  ?"  The  bored  expressions  on  the  faces 
of  the  officials  changed  to  expressions  of  amazement 
tinged  with  awe.  Instead  of  the  confusing  dash-dot- 
dash  which  they  associated  with  wireless,  here  was  a 
human  voice  coming  out  of  space  clear  and  distinct — 
yet  the  speaker  was  two  miles  in  the  air.  Soon  the 
same  signal  came  from  the  other  plane  and  the  exhibi- 
tion was  on.  Under  command  from  the  ground  the 
planes  were  manoeuvred  all  over  that  part  of  the  coun- 


304      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

try.  They  climbed  and  volplaned  and  circled.  They 
were  sent  on  scouting  expeditions  and  reported  what 
they  saw  as  they  travelled  through  the  air.  Continu- 
ous conversation  was  carried  on,  even  when  the  planes 
were  out  of  sight,  and  finally,  upon  command,  they 
came  tearing  do\Mi  the  skies  like  two  huge  homing 
pigeons  and  landed  where  directed.  From  that  mo- 
ment the  radio  telephone  was  sold  to  the  government. 
It  was  no  longer  a  question  as  to  whether  it  would 
work,  but  how  soon  and  in  what  quantity  its  manufac- 
ture could  be  started. 

The  primary  object  of  the  airplane  telephone  is  to 
make  it  possible  for  the  commander  of  an  air-squadron 
to  control  the  movement  of  his  men  in  the  air  just  as  a 
drill-sergeant  directs  the  evolutions  of  a  platoon  on  the 
ground.  For  this  purpose  extra-long  range  is  not 
required  or,  indeed,  desired,  the  distance  over  which 
they  can  talk  being  purposely  limited  to  two  or  three 
miles,  so  that  the  enemy  cannot  overhear  except  when 
actually  engaged  in  combat.     Then  it  does  not  matter. 

Neither  my  space  nor  my  knowledge  of  electrical 
engineering  are  sufficient  to  permit  of  explaining  in 
detail  the  working  of  the  radio  telephone.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  a  wind-driven  generator  suppHes  electric 
current  to  a  couple  of  vacuum  tubes  mounted  in  a 
box  filled  with  coils  and  condensers.  These  tubes 
transform  the  dynamo  current  into  a  high-frequency 
alternating  current  which  is  fed  out  into  space  through 
the  antenna.  This  antenna  consists  of  a  copper  wire 
about  200  feet  long,  which  with  a  lead  weight  on  the 
end  trails  out  behind  the  airplane  when  it  is  in  flight. 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  305 

Normally  this  wire  is  wound  up  on  a  reel,  being  let  out 
and  wound  in  as  occasion  demands.  With  the  special 
form  of  telephone-transmitter  already  described,  the 
words  of  the  aviator  are  impressed  on  this  wire,  the 
electric  waves  thus  set  in  motion  radiating  out  into 
space,  where  they  are  picked  up  by  similar  antennae 
either  on  other  planes  or  on  masts  on  the  ground.  The 
receivmg  process  is  the  exact  reverse  of  that  used  in 
sending,  other  vacuum  tubes  taking  the  high-frequency 
current  from  the  antenna  and  transforming  it  so  that 
it  can  be  heard  in  the  form  of  speech  in  the  telephone 
fitted  in  the  aviator's  helmet  or  in  the  loud-speaking 
horn  on  the  ground.  That  is  about  as  near  as  I  can 
come  to  explaining  the  radio  telephone  without  writ- 
ing a  book. 

One  of  boyhood's  most  joyous  recollections  is  that 
of  "balloon  day"  at  the  county  fair,  when  the  great 
yellow  spheroid  in  the  middle  of  the  race-track  enclo- 
sure slowly  filled  (oh,  so  slowly,  it  seemed!),  bulged, 
tugged  at  its  moorings,  and  at  last  rose  majestically 
sk\'\vard,  the  aeronaut,  a  lithe  figure  in  spangled  tights, 
waving  down  to  the  sea  of  upturned  faces  as  he  swung 
at  ease  in  his  cobweb-like  trapeze.  But,  though  the 
recollection  of  the  balloonist's  skill  and  daring  remains 
sharp  and  clear  in  our  minds,  so  much  space  has  been 
devoted  in  the  war  books  and  the  news  despatches  to 
the  exj-doits  of  the  aviators  that  we  seem  to  have  com- 
pletely lost  sight  of  the  no  less  hazardous  work  of 
those  daring  souls  who,  day  after  day,  in  heat  and 
cold,  in  snow  and  drenching  rain,  sat  huddled  in  their 


3o6      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

frail  baskets  under  the  swaying  gas-bags,  often  a  mile 
above  the  ground,  and  through  their  glasses  watched 
what  the  enemy  was  doing,  heedless  of  the  repeated 
attempts  made  by  the  enemy's  gunners  and  flyers  to 
bring  them  down.  Though  they  have  received  practi- 
cally no  share  of  the  publicity  and  praise  which  has 
been  showered  upon  the  flying-men,  the  officers  and 
men  of  the  Balloon  Section  of  the  Air  Service  deserve 
from  the  public  its  deepest  gratitude  and  appreciation. 
The  perilous  nature  of  their  work  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  in  the  last  six  weeks  of  the  war  twenty-one  Ameri- 
can balloons  were  lost,  six  being  destroyed  by  shell-fire 
and  fifteen  by  enemy  planes.  Its  importance  is  em- 
phasized by  the  fact  that  the  Germans  gave  official 
credit  to  their  aviators  of  one  and  a  half  planes  for  every 
balloon  brought  down. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  the  artillery-fire  of 
the  Allies  was  directed  for  the  most  part  by  airplanes. 
Their  work,  however,  left  much  to  be  desired.  Thougl 
the  plane  observers  could  locate  targets  fairly  well, 
they  frequently  lost  touch  with  their  batteries  through 
the  difficulty  of  sending  and  receiving  wireless  or  visual 
signals  from  the  swiftly  moving  craft.  Thus  there 
came  into  use  the  captive  balloon,  which  by  the  end  of 
the  war  had  practically  replaced  the  airplane  as  a 
director  of  gun-fire  wherever  possible,  thus  making  the 
artiller}^  infinitely  more  efficient  than  ever  before.  Sit- 
ting comfortably  aloft,  the  observer  in  the  basket  of 
a  kite-balloon  had  the  whole  panorama  of  his  particular 
station  spread  beneath  him  like  a  map  in  bas-relief, 
being  able  to  detect,  with  the  aid  of  powerful  glasses. 


A  SENTINEL  OF  THE  SKIES. 

Those  (larini;  souls  who  day  after  day  sat  huddled  in  their  frail  baskets  and  throuRh  their  glasses 
watched  what  the  enemy  was  doing. 


AN  A.MLKK  AX  OBSERVATION'  BALLOON  LEAVING  ITS  "BED"  BEHIND  THE 
WESTERN  FRONT. 


Pholonraph  by  U.  S.  Air  Service. 

A  BALLOON  COMPANY  MANCEUVRING  A  CAQUOT  FROM  WINCH  POSITION  TO  ITS 

BED. 


FIGHTERS   OF   THE   SKY  307 

anything  transpiring  within  a  radius  of  ten  miles  or 
more.  He  was  constantly  in  touch  with  his  batteries 
by  telephone  and  could  not  only  give  the  gunners,  by 
means  of  co-ordinated  maps,  the  exact  location  of  their 
target  and  the  effect  of  their  burstmg  shells,  but  could 
keep  the  staff  informed  of  enemy  troop  movements, 
airplane  activities,  and  preparations  for  impending 
attacks.  The  balloonist  became,  indeed,  a  veritable 
sentinel  of  the  skies,  hovering  over  the  battle-lines 
with  the  persistency  and  the  keen,  long-range  vision  of 
a  hawk.  He  played  a  less  spectacular  part  in  the 
great  drama  than  the  airplane  scout  or  fighter  in  the 
latter's  free  and  dazzling  flights,  but  his  duties  w^ere 
scarcely  less  important.  Nor  did  he  suffer  from  ennui 
during  his  stays  aloft.  When  a  kite-balloon  went  up 
along  the  battle-front  it  at  once  became  the  subject  of 
the  keenest  attention  by  the  enemy  because  it  was 
known  to  be  up  on  business  and  was  certain  to  be  the 
cause  of  damage  unless  it  was  forced  down.  Long- 
range,  high-velocity  guns  were  trained  on  it  and,  from 
the  upper  levels  of  the  air,  planes  came  swooping  down 
upon  it  in  their  attempts  to  dash  through  the  screen 
of  shells  from  the  antiaircraft  guns  and  put  an  incen- 
diary bullet  into  the  sausage-shaped,  elephant-colored 
gas-bag  which  so  insolently  defied  them.  .\nd  a  bullet 
which  got  home  meant  the  instant  ignition  of  the 
highly  inflammable  hydrogen,  the  quick  destruction  of 
the  balloon  and,  perhaps,  the  occupants  of  the  basket 
as  well,  unless  they  could  get  away  in  their  parachute. 
From  the  moment  the  gas  leaped  into  flame  until  the 
fall  of  the  balloon  was  rarely  over  fifteen  or  twenty 


3o8      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

seconds,  so  quick  thinking  and  quick  work  was  called 
for  if  the  men  in  the  basket  were  to  jump  to  safety. 
The  pilot  of  the  airplane  could  dodge  and  swerve  and 
slip  away  from  the  guns  by  a  hundred  shrewd  devices; 
not  so  the  pilot  of  the  kite-balloon  anchored  to  its 
windlass.  He  had  to  carry  on  his  abstruse  mathemati- 
cal calculations  unconcernedly,  his  spare  moments 
being  enlivened  by  watching  the  flash  of  an  enemy  gun 
on  a  distant  hill  and  then  waiting  twenty  or  thirty  sec- 
onds for  the  whining  messenger  of  death  to  reach  him, 
pondering,  meanwhile,  on  the  accuracy  of  that  particu- 
lar gunner.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  few  direct  shell-hits 
on  a  balloon  were  recorded  during  the  war,  most  of 
the  balloons  which  were  brought  down  having  been 
accounted  for  by  incendiary  bullets  from  diving  planes. 
Just  as  some  sportsmen  devote  their  energies  to  moose 
and  elk  and  grizzlies  while  others  specialize  on  smaller 
game,  so  some  of  the  airplane  pilots  made  a  specialty 
of  hunting  "sausages,"  and  at  this  thrilling  and  highly 
perilous  sport  became  amazingly  expert.  When  the 
Crown  Prince's  assaults  on  Verdun  were  at  their  height, 
I  saw  eight  French  aviators  start  out  to  bring  down 
eight  German  balloons.  Within  less  than  thirty  min- 
utes seven  of  the  drachen  had  come  down  in  flames — 
which  shows  that  a  balloonist  was  not  a  good  life- 
insurance  risk.  The  average  life  of  an  observation 
balloon  on  the  Western  Front  was  estimated  to  be 
about  fifteen  days.  Sometimes  it  lasted  only  a  few 
minutes.  There  is  a  record  of  an  American  balloon 
passing  unscathed  through  the  whole  period  of  Ameri- 
can activity  on  a  busy  sector,  but  it  was  generally  con- 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE  SKY  309 

sidered  that  a  balloon  which  has  seen  five  or  six  months 
of  ordinar>'  non-war  service  has  done  its  duty  and  is 
unsafe  because  of  the  deterioration  of  the  fabric. 

In  August,  1914,  Germany  had  perhaps  a  hundred 
kite  or  "sausage"  balloons,  France  and  England  a  very 
few.  The  German  t>pe  was  known  as  the  "Drachen," 
and  consisted  of  a  gas-cylinder  of  rubberized  cloth 
about  sixty-five  feet  long  and  twenty-seven  feet  in 
diameter,  with  hemispherical  ends.  For  stabiHty  a 
lobe,  about  a  third  of  the  diameter  of  the  cylinder,  was 
attached  to  the  underbody  of  the  gas-bag  and  curved 
up  around  the  end.  This  lobe,  made  of  a  lighter  fabric 
than  the  bag  itself,  automatically  filled  with  air  as  the 
balloon  ascended  and  acted  as  a  rudder  to  hold  the 
balloon  in  line.  For  further  stability  three  tail-cups, 
one  behind  the  other,  with  mouths  open  to  the  wind, 
were  attached  to  the  rear  of  the  balloon. 

While  the  Drachen  balloon  was  a  rather  clumsy 
affair  and  proved  unstable  in  high  winds,  its  impor- 
tance as  an  adjunct  to  the  artillery  was  early  recognized 
by  the  Allies,  for  the  results  of  its  work  daily  became 
more  apparent.  Though  the  armies  of  France,  Eng- 
land, Italy,  and  the  United  States  made  repeated  ex- 
periments in  an  attempt  to  evolve  a  type  which  should 
possess  greater  stability  and  permit  of  higher  altitudes 
being  attained,  it  remained  for  Captain  Caquot,  of  the 
French  Army,  to  produce  a  balloon  which  possessed 
both  of  these  qualities,  his  name  now  being  used  as  a 
designation  for  the  tj-pe  which  he  invented  and  which 
was  in  general  used  by  the  Allied  armies  during  the 
last  year  of  the  war.     The  Caquot  received  its  greatest 


3IO      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

compliment  from  Germany  when  her  army  adopted 
this  type  of  balloon  and  discarded  the  Drachen. 

The  Caquot  is  an  elongated  gas-bag,  ninety-three 
feet  long  and  twenty-eight  feet  in  its  widest  diameter, 
made  of  rubberized  cotton  cloth  and  sharply  stream- 
lined. Hydrogen  gas  is  the  ascensive  power  used,  lift- 
ing the  cable,  two  men,  basket,  and  all  other  equip- 
ment to  a  maximum  altitude,  in  the  best  weather 
conditions,  of  over  5,000  feet.  It  has  a  balloonet,  or 
air-chamber,  within  the  main  body  of  the  gas-envelope, 
which  as  the  balloon  ascends  fills  automatically  with 
air  through  a  simple  scoop  placed  under  the  nose  of 
the  balloon.  The  air  and  gas  chambers  are  separated 
by  a  diaphragm  of  cloth.  When  the  balloon  is  fully 
inflated  this  diaphragm  rests  on  the  underbody  of  the 
gas-envelope,  there  being  no  air  in  the  balloonet. 
When  the  balloon  descends,  minus  the  several  hundred 
feet  of  hydrogen  which  has  escaped  into  the  air,  it 
would  lose  its  shape  and  grow  flabby,  a  condition  of  con- 
siderable potential  danger,  were  it  not  for  the  balloonet, 
or  air-chamber,  coming  into  play.  As  the  air  is  driven 
in  through  the  scoop,  precisely  as  an  air-scoop  fixed  in 
the  port-hole  of  an  ocean  liner  brings  air  into  a  cabin, 
the  diaphragm  rises  and  takes  up  the  lost  bulk  in  the 
gas-envelope  above.  In  other  words,  the  escaping  gas 
is  replaced  by  air  by  means  of  what  amounts  to  an 
elastic  air-envelope  below  the  gas-envelope.  Is  that 
quite  clear?  Three  lobes  of  rubberized  fabric  give 
stability  to  the  balloon.  They  are  filled  automatically 
by  the  wind,  if  it  blows,  and,  expanding  to  their  full 
capacity,  act  as  rudders  to  hold  the  balloon  steady.    If 


AN  AMERICAN  KITE  BALLOON  ABOl'T  TO  ASCEND. 

The  lobes  of  rubberized  fabric  Rive  stability  to  the  balloon.     They  are  filled  automatically  by  the 
wind,  if  It  blows,  and.  expanding  to  their  full  capacity,  act  as  rudders  to  hold  the  balloon  steady. 


< 

< 

-r 

^ 

c  ^ 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  311 

there  is  no  wind  there  is,  of  course,  no  need  for  the 
lobes  and  they  hang  loosely,  like  elephants'  ears, 
Caquots  frequently  being  called  "elephants"  because 
of  these  drooping  lobes. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  we  were 
practically  without  this  type  of  aircraft,  the  only  bal- 
loon possessed  by  our  military  forces  on  the  Mexican 
border  having  been  the  gift  of  an  Akron  rubber  com- 
pany to  the  Ohio  National  Guard.  In  April,  191 7,  the 
whole  production  of  military  balloons  in  the  United 
States  was  not  over  two  or  three  a  month,  but  at  the 
request  of  the  government  the  various  rubber  manu- 
facturers went  whole-heartedly  into  the  business  of 
production,  so  that  when  the  war  ended  we  were  pro- 
ducing ten  balloons  a  day.  Up  to  November  11  there 
had  been  produced  for  the  United  States  Army  alone 
1,025  balloons  of  all  types,  642  of  these  being  the  final 
Type  R  Observation  Balloon.  Propaganda  and  target 
balloons  were  Hkewise  developed  and  produced,  as 
were  new-type  parachutes,  canvas  balloon  hangars, 
and  1,221,582  feet  of  steel  cable — a  sufficient  length 
of  single-strand,  specially  manufactured  wire  to  more 
than  reach  around  the  globe. 

One  of  the  chief  difficulties  which  had  to  be  over- 
come was  the  question  of  a  sufficient  supply  of  cotton 
cloth  of  proper  strength  and  texture,  for  balloon  cloth 
was  practically  unknown  in  this  country'  when  we 
entered  the  war.  In  order  to  keep  up  with  the  balloon 
schedule  of  the  War  Department,  the  manufacturers 
required  millions  of  yards  of  a  very  high-grade  cloth 
with  a  weave  of  140  threads  to  the  inch  both  ways. 


312      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

At  first  the  wastage  due  to  imperfect  balloon  cloth  was 
enormous,  frequently  running  as  high  as  60  per  cent, 
but  by  care  and  effort  this  was  reduced  to  perhaps  10 
per  cent  in  total  from  the  loom  to  the  balloon.  The 
wastage  was  largely  caused  by  ''slubs,"  knots,  and 
other  imperfections  of  weaving,  which  prevented  an 
even  surface  for  rubberizing  and  consequently  impaired 
the  strength  and  gas-holding  qualities  of  the  cloth. 
Hundreds  of  inspectors,  both  factory  and  government 
employees,  were  necessary  to  get  an  approximately 
perfect  fabric,  and  all  had  to  be  developed  for  this 
work.  Indeed,  the  making  of  balloon  cloth  in  the 
United  States  amounted  to  the  development  of  an 
entirely  new  industry,  for  which  thousands  of  men  had 
to  be  specially  trained  for  months.  It  will  give  you  a 
better  conception  of  the  magnitude  of  this  new  indus- 
try, perhaps,  when  I  tell  you  that  to  make  ten  balloons 
a  day  it  was  necessary  for  the  cotton-mills  to  weave 
about  600,000  yards  of  this  special  balloon  cloth  a 
month,  and  this  required  3,200  looms.  It  is  a  tribute 
to  the  skill  of  the  American  weavers  that  reports  from 
the  front  stated  that  the  American  fabric  burnt  very 
much  more  slowly  than  that  made  in  Europe,  thus  giv- 
ing the  observer  more  time  to  get  away  in  his  parachute 
and  minimizing  the  danger  of  the  burning  balloon  fall- 
ing on  him. 

Everything  connected  with  the  kite-balloon  pre- 
sented more  or  less  of  a  problem  because  it  was  new. 
The  mobile  windlass,  for  example,  by  which  the  balloon 
was  let  up  and  pulled  down  on  its  cable,  had  to  be 
developed  from  nothing     But  the  genius  of  the  Ameri- 


FIGHTERS   OF   THE   SKY  313 

can  manufacturer  overcame  this  difficulty  as  it  did 
every  other  in  the  manufacture  of  instruments  for  war. 
Though  steam  was  the  motive  power  first  used  for  bal- 
loon windlasses,  before  the  close  of  the  war  American 
ingenuity  had  developed  both  gas  and  electric  wind- 
lasses which  were  thoroughly  efficient.  The  mobile 
windlass  could  move  on  the  road  under  its  owti  power 
at  a  speed  of  twenty  miles  an  hour,  and  could  tow  a 
balloon  in  the  air  at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour,  or 
even  better  if  necessity  demanded.  The  gasoline  wind- 
lass has  made  a  record  pull-down  of  1,600  feet  a  min- 
ute, bringing  down  its  balloon  at  a  speed  more  than 
three  times  that  of  the  fastest  passenger-elevator. 

A  sufficient  supply  of  hydrogen  gas  was,  at  the  be- 
ginning, another  of  the  balloon  problems.  Hydrogen, 
before  the  war,  was  a  by-product  in  the  manufacture 
of  commercial  oxygen,  and  only  a  small  quantity  was 
used  in  this  country.  But  the  sudden  demand  for 
millions  of  cubic  feet  of  this  gas  was  promptly  met  by 
the  establishment  of  government  plants  and  the  ex- 
pansion of  privately  owned  ones.  Though  by  far  the 
greater  part  of  the  gas  used  in  balloons  at  home  and 
abroad  was  made  at  permanent  supply  stations  and 
shipped  to  the  points  where  it  was  needed,  in  steel 
cylinders,  an  extremely  ingenious  t>'pe  of  portable  gen- 
erator was  developed  for  the  manufacture  of  hydrogen 
in  the  field.  When  these  portable  hydrogen  generators 
were  unnecessary  or  unavailable,  the  gas  shipped  from 
long  distances  was  stored  in  high-pressure  cylinders  or 
"nurse  balloons,"  the  latter  being  simply  huge  bags  of 
rubberized  fabric,  each  with  a  capacity  of  5,000  cubic 


314      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

feet  of  hydrogen,  which  were  used  in  the  same  way  as 
the  ordinary  steel  gasometers  to  be  seen  in  any  Ameri- 
can city. 

Hydrogen  is  itself  an  inflammable  gas,  and  when 
mixed  with  air  or  oxygen  is  dangerously  explosive.  It 
has,  therefore,  always  been  a  source  of  great  concern  to 
balloonists,  who  had  long  dreamed  of  a  non-inflamma- 
ble, non-explosive  gas,  sufficiently  light  to  function  as 
does  hydrogen.  It  was  known  that  helium  was  such 
a  gas,  but  it  was,  until  very  recently,  so  scarce  and 
costly  that  its  use  in  balloons  had  scarcely  been  given 
a  serious  thought.  Not  more  than  loo  cubic  feet  of 
helium  had  ever  been  produced  up  to  the  time  we 
started  our  balloon  programme,  and  it  was  valued  at 
$1,700  a  cubic  foot.  Scientific  investigators  in  the 
employ  of  the  government  discovered  about  this  time, 
however,  that  certain  natural  gases  in  the  United 
States  contained  limited  quantities  of  helium,  and  the 
problem  then  resolved  itself  into  one  of  extracting  the 
helium  from  these  gases  in  sufficient  quantities,  and  at 
a  sufficiently  low  cost,  to  make  practical  its  use.  Funds 
were  forthcoming  and,  under  the  supervision  of  the 
Navy  Department  and  the  Bureau  of  Mines,  the  proc- 
ess of  gas  liquefaction  was  put  into  operation,  with  the 
result  that  on  the  day  of  the  Armistice  there  were  on 
the  docks,  ready  for  shipment  overseas,  147,000  cubic 
feet  of  helium  with  a  pre-war  value  of  a  quarter  of  a 
billion  dollars.  Plants  were  under  construction  which, 
had  the  war  continued,  would  have  produced  50,000 
cubic  feet  of  this  gas  a  day  at  a  cost  of  approximately 
ten  cents  per  cubic  foot.     The  importance  of  this  dis- 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  315 

covery  cannot  be  overestimated,  for  it  marks  the  open- 
ing of  a  new  era  in  lighter- than-airship  navigation.  In 
war  it  will  make  the  incendiary  bullet,  which  has  caused 
the  destruction  of  countless  balloons,  a  joke.  The 
only  way  to  bring  down  a  balloon  filled  with  helium 
will  be  literally  to  tear  it  apart  by  a  direct  hit  with  a 
high-explosive  shell.  Under  peace  conditions,  it  opens 
up  undreamed-of  possibilities  in  the  development  of 
new  types  of  dirigible  airships,  as  the  danger  from 
lightning,  static  electricity,  and  sparks  of  any  kind  has 
been  entirely  eliminated.  To  cross  the  Atlantic  in  a 
helium-filled  balloon  will  be  safer,  so  far  as  danger 
from  fire  is  concerned,  than  to  cross  the  continent  in  a 
train. 

Do  you  remember  that  hot  September  afternoon 
at  the  county  fair  when  you  sat  perched  on  the  white- 
washed race-track  fence,  your  face  turned  skyward, 
and  watched  with  fascinated  eyes  the  tiny  yellow 
globule,  high,  high  in  the  blue,  which  you  had  seen 
rise  from  the  ground  half  an  hour  before  as  a  giant  gas- 
balloon  ?  And  do  you  remember  how,  as  you  watched, 
the  band  in  the  grand  stand  suddenly  stopped  playing 
and  an  awed  hush  fell  upon  the  crowd,  and  you  saw  a 
tiny  something  detach  itself  from  the  yellow  globule 
and  drop  into  space,  at  first  falling  with  sickening 
speed,  then  slower,  still  slower,  until  the  object,  which 
you  knew  was  a  man  in  pink  tights  (though  sometimes, 
in  order  to  heighten  the  sensation,  it  was  a  young  and, 
of  course,  beautiful  woman),  landed  quite  gently  in  a 
distant  field?    In  those  days  we  little  dreamed  that 


3i6      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

the  strange,  umbrella-like  contrivance  which  brought 
the  aeronaut  safely  to  earth  would  ever  be  used  for 
any  other  purpose  than  to  thrill  the  admission-paying 
multitudes,  but  the  emergencies  and  necessities  pro- 
voked by  the  Great  War  turned  things  with  which  we 
were  all  familiar  to  unfamiliar  uses,  as,  for  example, 
when  it  converted  a  farm  tractor  into  a  fighting-tank. 
Thus  it  was  that  the  observers  came  to  use  parachutes 
to  escape  from  their  burning  balloons  just  as  the  in- 
mates of  an  office-building  dash  down  the  iron  fire- 
escapes  when  somebody  shouts  ''Fire!" 

At  first  the  individual  or  one-man  parachute  was 
used  to  insure  the  escape  of  the  observer  in  the  basket 
from  his  burning  balloon,  but  though  the  man  escaped, 
the  valuable  maps  and  records  were  lost.  In  order  to 
save  these  records  there  was  invented  the  basket  para- 
chute. This  was  considerably  larger  in  diameter  than 
the  individual  parachute,  and  when  cut  away  brought 
the  basket  with  all  that  it  contained — men,  records, 
instruments,  everything — safely  and  quickly  to  the 
ground.  All  the  observer  had  to  do  was  to  pull  a  cord 
and  he  started  downward.  It  was  easier  than  step- 
ping into  an  elevator  and  saying:  ''Ground  floor, 
please."  Amazingly  few  fatalities  occurred  in  the 
hundreds  of  cases  in  which  the  individual  and  basket 
parachutes  were  used  in  actual  war  service  or  in  train- 
ing. I  heard  of  one  balloon  observer  who  was  forced 
to  make  four  parachute  jumps  in  a  single  day,  and  of 
another  who  made  three  in  four  hours,  two  balloons 
being  burned  over  his  head.  Thirty  parachute  jumps 
were  made  by  American  observers  during  the  Argonne 


A  BASKET  PARACHUTE  DROP. 
The  biisket  parachulc  Lrintts  men.  instrument,  and  records  safely  tu  the  ;;ruund. 


BALLOO.NIST   MAKIXC.   A   PARACHl'TE  JIMP   l-ROM   AX   ALTITIDE  Ol-   7.!t()()  lEKT. 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE   SKY  317 

offensive  alone.  Yet  the  safety  of  the  parachute  is 
demonstrated  beyond  all  question  by  the  fact  that 
during  the  entire  time  the  American  forces  were  in  the 
field  only  one  death  occurred  as  the  direct  result  of  a 
parachute  drop,  and  in  that  particular  instance  the 
burning  balloon  fell  directly  on  top  of  the  open  para- 
chute, setting  it  on  fire  and  allowing  the  observer  to 
fall  the  rest  of  the  distance  to  the  earth. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  use  of  parachutes 
is  relatively  new  compared  even  with  ballooning.  The 
man  who  developed  the  parachute  and  who  first  de- 
scended safely  to  earth  by  its  means — Thomas  S. 
Baldwin — now  holds  a  major's  commission  in  the 
American  Air  Service,  and  during  the  war  had  direct 
charge  of  the  inspection  of  all  army  balloons  and  para- 
chutes. As  the  result  of  a  life  spent  in  performing 
aerial  exploits  of  all  kinds,  under  all  conditions  and  in 
all  parts  of  the  world.  Major  Baldwin  knows  what  is 
and  what  is  not  safe,  so  that  when  a  balloon  or  para- 
chute was  sent  into  action  the  observer  always  had  the 
satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the  world's  most  famous 
balloonist  had  given  it  his  0.  K. 

Speaking  of  parachute  jumps  reminds  me  of  an 
incident  which  actually  occurred  on  one  of  the  Amer- 
ican sectors  toward  the  close  of  the  war.  Despite  the 
fact  that  only  one  American  balloonist  lost  his  life 
in  making  a  parachute  jump— and  m  that  case  the 
fatahty  was  caused  by  the  burning  balloon  falling  on 
and  setting  fire  to  the  parachute — a  very  considerable 
element  of  risk  is  involved  in  the  performance.     In 


3i8      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

fact,  it  became  the  custom  to  recommend  a  man 
making  a  parachute  jump  for  the  Distinguished  Ser- 
vice Cross,  or,  if  he  was  operating  with  the  French, 
for  the  Croix  de  Guerre. 

Just  before  the  opening  of  the  Argonne  offensive 
an  observation  balloon  over  the  American  lines  was 
attacked  by  a  German  plane  and  sent  down  in  flames, 
the  observer  escaping  by  means  of  his  parachute. 

"You'll  get  the  D.  S.  C.  all  right,"  his  friends 
greeted  him,  as  he  disentangled  himself  from  the  para- 
chute harness. 

"We're  sending  up  another  balloon  in  a  few 
minutes,"  said  the  commanding  officer.  "Want  to 
try  it  again?" 

"Surest  thing  you  know,  sir,"  replied  the  grin- 
ning youngster. 

But  before  the  second  balloon  had  been  in  the 
air  an  hour  another  enemy  plane  swooped  down  upon 
it,  like  a  hawk  on  a  chicken-yard,  and  it  too  burst  into 
flame.  Again  the  observer  floated  to  safety  beneath 
his  parachute. 

"I  guess  I've  got  that  D.  S.  C.  copper-riveted 
this  time,"  he  remarked;  but,  when  a  third  balloon 
ascended,  he  was  in  the  basket.  Once  more  a  Ger- 
man plane  came  tearing  down  the  skies,  a  stream  of 
bullets  ripped  the  silken  gas-bag,  and  for  the  third 
time  that  day  the  observer  reached  the  earth  by  the 
parachute  route. 

"You'll  probably  get  the  Croix  de  Guerre  as  well 
as  the  D.  S.  C,"  his  friends  assured  him.  "The  French 
are  strong  for  this  sort  of  thing.  They  may  even  give 
you  the  Legion  of  Honor." 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  319 

Treading  on  air,  the  youngster  returned  to  bal- 
loon headquarters.  Tacked  on  the  bulletin-board  in 
the  hallway  was  a  General  Order.  He  paused  to 
glance  at  it.    This  is  what  he  read: 

"It  is  hereby  directed  that  the  custom  of  recom- 
mending officers  making  parachute  jumps  for  the  Dis- 
tinguished Service  Cross  or  other  decorations  be  dis- 
continued." 

Though  the  question  of  providing  proper  clothing 
for  our  flying-men  and  balloon  observers  did  not  loom 
large  when  compared  with  the  vast  problems  involved 
in  the  production  of  engines,  spruce,  balloon  cloth, 
bombs,  and  machine-guns,  it  was  nevertheless  an  ex- 
ceedingly important  one,  for  an  aviator  cannot  do  his 
work  if  he  is  cold,  and  it  is  always  bitterly  cold  in  the 
higher  air-lanes.  A  man  flying  at  20,000  feet,  say, 
suffers  more  from  the  cold  than  he  would  on  the  ice- 
fields at  the  North  Pole.  Aviators  are  commissioned 
officers,  and  when  not  at  work  wear  the  regular  uni- 
form, which,  as  in  the  case  of  all  officers,  is  furnished  by 
the  officer  himself.  But  the  clothing  required  for  work 
in  the  air,  being  of  a  highly  special  character  and  very 
expensive,  is  loaned  to  the  flyers  by  the  government. 
In  view  of  this,  it  is  a  source  of  satisfaction  to  know 
that  it  was  frankly  admitted  on  the  front  that  our 
flyers  were  by  far  the  best  and  most  efficiently  equipped 
of  any  nation. 

After  many  tests  and  much  development,  the  fol- 
lowing outfit  was  devised:  On  the  head  was  worn,  in 
moderate  weather,  first  a  woollen  hood,  or  helmet,  so 
designed  as  to  fit  closely  over  the  entire  head  and 


320      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

shoulders.  In  extremely  cold  weather,  or  for  high- 
flight  work,  there  was  worn  a  silk  hood  of  like  design 
and  double  thickness,  having  between  its  layers  an 
electrically  heated  unit  connected  by  copper-wire  cables 
extending  through  the  suit  proper  with  the  generator 
on  the  engine  of  the  plane.  Over  this  silk  hood  was 
worn  a  soft-leather  helmet  lined  with  fur,  the  face  was 
entirely  covered  with  a  wool-lined  leather  mask,  and 
the  eyes  were  protected  by  goggles.  When  it  was 
necessary  for  the  aviator  to  use  the  radiotelephone, 
however,  the  fur-lined  helmet  was  replaced  by  the 
radio  helmet,  a  leather  affair  somewhat  similar  in  de- 
sign to  the  other  but  so  fashioned  as  to  contain  the 
receivers  of  a  wireless  telephone.  For  high-flight  work, 
in  addition  to  the  above  equipment,  a  rubber  oxygen 
mask,  which  contained  a  transmitter  permitting  the 
wearer  to  speak  as  well  as  hear  by  wireless,  was  also 
worn.  This  mask  was  attached  by  a  flexible  tube  to 
a  tank  of  oxygen  carried  in  the  plane,  being  so  arranged 
that  it  automatically  fed  the  aviator  with  the  amount 
of  oxygen  required  for  the  altitude  at  which  he  was 
flying. 

Over  the  body  was  worn  a  one-piece  flying  suit  of 
waterproof,  airproof  material,  reaching  from  throat  to 
feet,  buttoned  tightly  at  wrists  and  ankles,  and  lined 
throughout  with  fur.  Through  these  suits,  between 
the  fur  and  the  outer  coverings,  were  placed  wire  cables 
terminating  in  snap-fasteners  at  neck,  wrists,  and 
ankles,  to  which  could  be  attached  silk-covered  wires 
leadmg  to  other  electrical  heating  units  in  the  helmets, 
gloves,  and  moccasins,  all  of  which  were  warmed  by 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE  SKY  321 

a  current  drawn  from  the  generator  on  the  engine. 
Hence,  though  our  aviators  not  infrequently  flew  in  a 
temperature  of  thirty  degrees  below  zero,  they  were  as 
warm  and  comfortable  as  though  they  were  sitting 
before  a  log  fire  at  home — much  more  comfortable,  in 
fact,  than  were  their  relatives  and  friends  in  America 
on  the  fireless  Sundays  which  made  uncomfortable  the 
first  winter  of  the  war.  On  his  hands  the  aviator 
wore,  in  addition  to  the  electrically  heated  gloves,  a 
pair  of  muskrat  gauntlets  extending  nearly  to  the 
elbow;  on  his  feet,  over  the  electrically  heated  mocca- 
sins, another  pair  of  moccasins,  lined  with  sheepswool, 
reaching  almost  to  the  knees.  It  is  scarcely  necessary 
to  add  that  our  air-fighters  spent  more  time  in  dress- 
ing than  does  a  chorus-girl  in  a  comic  opera,  and  that 
when  they  were  dressed  they  looked  like  a  cross  be- 
tween an  Arctic  explorer  and  a  deep-sea  diver. 

The  question  of  obtaining  the  fur  for  lining  this 
clothing  presented  a  perplexing  problem,  for  there 
were  required  vast  quantities  of  pelts  or  skins  of  ex- 
treme warmth  and  sufficiently  strong  to  withstand 
rough  usage,  but  not  too  bulky  or  heavy.  After  con- 
siderable investigation  it  was  found  that  these  require- 
ments were  met  by  the  skin  of  the  Nuchwang  dog, 
which  inhabits  one  of  the  provinces  of  north  China, 
though  I  have  no  doubt  that  sable  or  ermine  would 
have  answered  the  purpose  equally  well  had  cost  been 
no  consideration.  The  demands  of  the  American  Air 
Service  required  practically  all  of  these  skins  that 
could  be  had  in  China  and  necessitated  the  lifting  of 
an  embargo  to  bring  them  into  the  United  States, 


322      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

which,  thanks  to  the  co-operation  of  the  War  Trade 
Board,  was  obtained.  The  last  purchase  before  the 
Armistice  was  signed  called  for  500,000  of  these  dog- 
skins. A  strange  thing,  was  it  not,  that  the  lust  for 
power  of  one  WiUiam  HohenzoUern,  late  of  Berlin  and 
Potsdam,  should  bring  about,  among  countless  other 
things,  the  slaughter  of  half  a  million  dogs  in  far-off 
China?  Though  figures  are,  as  a  rule,  dry  things,  the 
magnitude  of  the  Air  Service's  clothing  problem  can 
be  better  appreciated  by  my  giving  a  few  of  them. 
The  work  in  hand  for  air-clothing  when  the  Armistice 
was  signed  involved  upward  of  $5,000,000.  Fifty  thou- 
sand fur-lined  flying  suits  at  $36.25;  over  a  100,000 
leather  helmets  at  $4.50;  a  like  number  of  leather 
coats  at  prices  ranging  from  $10  to  $30,  and  80,000 
goggles  at  $3.50  a  pair  reflect  the  major  items  and  ex- 
plain how  the  government  spent  some  of  the  money 
which  you  paid  for  your  Liberty  Bonds. 

Though  in  this  chapter  I  have  attempted  to  sketch 
the  manifold  phases  of  America's  preparation  for  ob- 
taining supremacy  in  the  sky,  I  have  purposely  left 
until  the  last  the  most  important  phase  of  all — the  fly- 
ing-men themselves.  The  personnel  side  of  the  Air 
Service,  including  the  selection,  training,  organization, 
and  operation-  of  the  flying  forces,  developed,  within 
the  year  following  America's  declaration  of  war,  into 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  educational  systems  in 
this  or  any  other  country,  with  a  larger  student  body 
and  a  more  diverse  curriculum  than  any  university  in 
the  world.    Teaching  men  to  fly,  to  send  messages  by 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  323 

wireless,  to  operate  machine-guns  in  the  air,  to  gauge 
the  effectiveness  of  artillery-fire  by  its  bursts,  to  read 
and  make  maps,  to  operate  gas-engines,  and  to  travel 
hundreds  of  miles  by  compass;  teaching  other  men 
to  read  the  enemy's  strategy  from  aerial  photographs, 
and  still  others  to  repair  instruments,  ignition  systems, 
propellers,  airplane  wings,  and  motors,  required  a  vast 
network  of  schools  and  flying-fields,  a  huge  force  of  in- 
structors, many  of  whom  themselves  had  to  be  trained, 
and  an  amazing  mass  of  equipment  and  curricula. 

The  pilot  is  the  heart  and  brain  of  the  whole  fly- 
ing apparatus.  Parts  of  the  airj^lane  may  break  with- 
out serious  result,  but  when  the  pilot  breaks,  even 
momentarily,  nothing  is  left  to  direct  the  flight.  The 
man  and  the  machine  come  crashing  to  the  ground. 
The  early  view  that  any  one  who  "had  the  nerve" 
could  fly  caused  hundreds  of  unnecessary  deaths  and 
an  enormous  avoidable  waste  of  material.  The  lesson, 
for  which  we  paid  in  bitter  and  costly  experience,  was 
that  it  is  essential  to  choose  flyers  who  are  especially 
fitted  for  particular  work,  and  then  to  keep  them  in 
condition  to  perform  their  duties  at  all  times  by  using 
the  same  thought  and  care  which  is  expended  in  the 
feeding,  exercising,  and  conditioning  of  a  race-horse. 
Nature,  remember,  never  intended  man  to  fly  in  the 
same  sense  that  she  did  not  intend  him  for  life  in  a 
submarine.  Conditions  are  unnatural  from  the  time 
he  leaves  the  ground  until  he  returns.  There  are 
countless  obstacles  which  he  must  overcome.  He  flies 
in  an  atmosphere  deficient  in  that  ox}'gen  which  is 
"the  breath  of  life";  he  is  subjected  in  war  to  the 


324      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

shell-fire  of  antiaircraft  guns  and  attack  by  enemy 
aircraft;  he  travels  through  space  at  a  speed  far  ex- 
ceeding that  of  the  fastest  express- train.  In  attaining 
altitudes  and  breathing  rarefied  air,  the  flyer  is  shak- 
ing his  fist  in  the  face  of  nature. 

It  is  imperative,  therefore,  to  classify  the  flyer  for 
the  kind  of  work  he  is  physically  capable  of  perform- 
ing. Some  men  are  not  able  to  fly  at  higher  levels 
than  a  few  thousand  feet  without  suffering  deleterious 
effects,  while  others  may  operate  at  five  miles  above 
the  surface  of  the  earth  without  physical  harm.  It 
is  necessary  to  know  a  flyer's  limitations  before  his 
training  is  specialized,  for  the  saving  of  time  and 
money,  and,  indeed,  the  flyer  himself.  Just  as  the 
trainer  of  a  varsity  track  team  classifies  his  available 
material  into  sprinters,  distance  men,  broad  jumpers, 
high  jumpers,  and  weight  throwers,  so  the  director 
of  a  flying-school  must  classify  his  material  into  men 
fitted  for  combat,  observation,  and  bombing.  It  would 
be  an  obvious  waste  of  time  and  effort  to  train  a  man 
for  combat  work  at  high  altitudes  and  then  discover 
that  his  physical  limitations  permitted  only  of  his 
doing  bombing  work  at  comparatively  low  levels.  In 
order  to  accompKsh  this  work  of  classification,  branch 
research  medical  laboratories  were  established  at  the 
various  flying-fields,  which,  by  means  of  certain  stand- 
ardized tests,  especially  the  one  on  the  ''rebreather" 
machine,  placed  the  flyers  in  their  proper  categories. 
The  rebreathing  tests  were  conducted  in  a  room  so 
designed,  by  the  gradual  expulsion  of  its  oxygen,  as  to 
create  the  exact  and  various  conditions  that   would 


FIGHTERS   OF  THE   SKY  325 

exist  at  any  known  altitude.  Physicians  and  physi- 
ological experts,  themselves  supplied  with  oxygen 
through  tubes,  remained  in  the  room  throughout  the 
tests,  closely  observing  the  effect  produced  on  the 
candidate  by  the  gradual  decrease  of  the  oxygen  sup- 
ply. It  was  soon  found  that  a  man's  faculty  to  respond 
to  sight,  sound,  and  touch  becomes  more  dormant  as 
the  air  becomes  more  rarefied,  and  it  was  to  offset  this 
condition  that  the  oxygen  apparatus  which  I  have  de- 
scribed in  preceding  pages  was  designed.  The  effect 
of  low  oxygen  upon  the  mental  process  varies  greatly, 
however,  according  to  the  individual.  He  usuall}' 
becomes  mentally  inefficient  at  an  altitude  at  which 
there  is  as  yet  no  serious  failure  of  his  vital  bodily  func- 
tions. By  simple  tests  of  mental  alertness  during  these 
rebreathing  experiments,  such  as  directing  the  candi- 
date to  press  designated  buttons  controlling  electric 
lights  of  certain  colors,  controlling  a  volume  of  sound 
by  operating  a  pedal  with  his  feet,  and  the  like,  it  was 
easy  to  determine  that  one  flier  would  lose  his  mental 
alertness  at  15,000  feet,  while  another  would  retain 
full  control  of  his  faculties  at  nearly  double  that 
height. 

In  order  to  accomplish  the  best  results,  a  compre- 
hensive programme  was  undertaken,  providing  for  the 
standardization  of  both  tests  and  examiners.  Sixty- 
seven  military  units  were  established,  each  examining 
from  ten  to  sixty  applicants  a  day,  there  being  required, 
in  addition  to  the  complete  physical  examination  em- 
bracing all  the  features  ordinarily  required  of  men 
entering  the  military  service,  rigid  tests  of  the  special 


326      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

senses  of  vision,  hearing,  and  motion  sensing.  Yet, 
despite  the  severity  of  the  tests  to  which  the  candi- 
dates were  subjected,  the  records  show  that  70.7  of 
the  applicants  quahfied.  But  the  work  of  the  sur- 
geons did  not  end  when  they  had  passed  a  man  as 
physically  fitted  for  training  as  an  aviator.  On  the 
contrary,  it  had  only  begun.  The  candidate  was  not 
only  kept  under  the  closest  medical  observation  during 
his  training  days,  but  this  observation  did  not  relax 
even  after  he  had  become  a  fully  fledged  flyer  with  the 
silver  wings  embroidered  on  his  breast,  for  the  "flight 
surgeon"  who  was  attached  to  every  squadron  was 
instructed  to  keep  the  flyers  physically  fit  and  to  care- 
fully investigate  the  causes  of  all  such  accidents  as 
might  be  attributed  to  the  mental  or  physical  failure 
of  the  flyers  themselves.  Keeping  the  flyer  fit  was 
by  no  means  as  simple  a  matter  as  it  sounds,  for  it 
included  seeing  that  the  men  took  the  necessary 
amount  of  physical  exercise,  the  provision  of  proper 
recreation,  watching  the  state  of  fatigue  of  the  in- 
dividual, making  arrangements  for  leave  or  furlough, 
determining  the  quantity  and  nature  of  their  food  and 
the  questions  of  alcohol  and  tobacco,  and  re-examining 
them  at  frequent  intervals.  Any  one  who  knows  how 
temperamental  many  flying-men  are  inclined  to  be 
will  realize  that  the  flight  surgeons  held  no  sinecures. 
During  the  last  few  months  of  the  war  an  appara- 
tus was  perfected  whereby  students  could  acquire  fly- 
ing experience  and  training  without  leaving  the  ground. 
This  machine,  known  as  the  "Ruggles  Orientator,"  is 
a  modification  of  the  universal  joint,  composed  of  three 


FIGHTERS  OF  THE  SKY  327 

concentric  rings  so  pivoted  as  to  permit  the  fuselage, 
which  is  pivoted  within  the  innermost  ring,  to  be  put 
through  every  possible  evolution  experienced  in  actual 
flying — the  candidate  being  able  to  experience,  while 
safely  on  the  ground,  the  sensations  of  nose-diving, 
tail-diving,  side-slipping,  looping  the  loop,  and  all  the 
rest — everything,  in  fact,  except  forward  progression. 
I  feel  certain  that  a  man  of  Mr.  Ruggles's  amazing 
ingenuity  could  have  satisfied  both  the  parent  and 
child  of  the  ancient  verse: 

"'Mother,  may  I  go  in  to  swim?' 
*Yes,  my  darling  daughter. 
Hang  your  hose  on  a  hickory  limb, 
And  don't  go  near  the  water.'" 


VII 
"M.  I." 

IN  writing  the  story  of  Military  Intelligence  I  feel 
as  though  I  were  picking  my  way  along  a  narrow 
and  slippery  path  which  is  bordered  on  either  side  by 
precipices  and  is  in  places  obscured  by  fog.  On  the 
one  hand,  I  am  in  danger  of  unconsciously  overempha- 
sizing the  mysterious  and  sensational  aspects  of  the 
subject;  on  the  other,  of  making  it  appear  more  com- 
monplace and  prosaic  than  it  really  is.  And,  at  every 
few  steps,  I  find  my  progress  hindered  by  the  veil  of 
secrecy  which  necessarily  enveloped  certain  activities 
of  the  division  during  the  war,  and  which  it  has  not 
been  deemed  wise  entirely  to  lift  with  the  return  of 
peace.  And  there  is  still  another  difficulty.  The 
public  has  in  a  large  measure  obtained  its  conceptions 
of  military  intelligence  work  from  the  novels  of  Sir 
Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  Mr.  Robert  W.  Chambers,  and 
Mr.  E.  Phillips  Oppenheim.  So,  if  the  pages  of  this 
narrative  are  not  filled  with  alluring  adventuresses  of 
dazzling  beauty,  cloaked  assassins,  secret  agents  flit- 
ting about  the  countryside  in  high-powered  cars, 
German  barons  disguised  as  head  waiters,  mysterious 
signals  flashed  by  night  to  lurking  U-boats,  messages 
written  in  invisible  ink,  and  midnight  meetings  in  sub- 
terranean chambers,  my  readers  will  be  disappointed 
and   dissatisfied   and   will   probably   believe  in   their 

hearts  that  I  am  holding  something  out  on  them. 

328 


"M.  I."  329 

The  story  depends,  after  all,  on  the  angle  from 
which  you  look  at  it.  I  know  an  officer  of  the  Military 
Intelligence  Division  who  goes  about  on  tiptoe,  figura- 
tively speaking,  with  his  finger  always  on  his  lips.'  He 
is  so  tight-mouthed  that  Colonel  House  seems  gar- 
rulous beside  him.  This  officer  has  been  of  enormous 
service  to  his  country,  and  the  importance  of  his  work 
fully  justifies  the  secrecy  and  mystery  with  which  he 
surrounds  it,  yet  his  duties  have  been  performed  at  an 
office  desk  in  Washington,  with  a  table  of  logarithms 
at  his  elbow,  and,  so  far  as  action  and  adventure  are 
concerned,  his  life  has  been  about  as  exciting  as  that  of 
a  professor  of  mathematics.  I  know  another  man, 
likewise  connected  with  the  Military  Intelligence  Divi- 
sion, who,  assuming  the  guise  of  a  workman,  succeeded 
in  obtaining  admission  to  the  councils  of  the  I.  W.  W. 
and  of  criminals  operating  in  the  forests  of  the  North- 
west, and  who  did  more  than  any  single  person, 
perhaps,  to  unearth  the  conspiracy  which  had  for  its 
object  the  crippling  of  our  airplane  programme.  For 
weeks  on  end  he  carried  his  life  in  his  hands,  for,  had 
his  identity  been  suspected,  he  would  have  met  a  sud- 
den and  mysterious  end  by  knife  or  bullet.  Yet  he 
speaks  of  his  adventures  as  casually  as  though  he  had 
been  in  no  greater  danger  than  a  Fifth  Avenue  police- 
man. 

The  fact  is  that  the  truth  lies  somewhere  between 
the  extremes  represented  by  these  two  instances.  The 
opportunities  which  have  been  afforded  me  to  investi- 
gate the  subject  lead  to  the  conclusion  that,  though 
MiHtary  Intelligence  is,  in  many  of  its  phases,  as  hard- 


330      THE   AR}.IY   BEHIND   THE   AR:\IY 

boiled  and  unromantic  as  Standard  Oil,  it  is  neverthe- 
less thickly  sprinkled  '^'ith  incidents  and  episodes 
which  would  have  proxided  material  for  the  creators 
of  LeCoq  and  Sherlock  Holmes.  Though  a  fairly  care- 
ful perusal  of  the  files  of  "M.  I.  D.,"  as  the  Division  of 
MiHtar}'  Intelligence  is  commonly  referred  to  in  the 
army,  discloses  no  evidence  that  German  spies  of  the 
caliber  of  Karl  Lody  and  Bolo  Pasha  operated  in  this 
country'  during  the  war,  they  do  contain  the  dossiers 
of  enemy  agents  whose  personaHties  and  exploits  meet 
all  the  requirements  for  characters  in  spy  fiction.  Prob- 
ably the  nearest  approach  to  the  high-class  spy,  as  made 
f  amihar  by  the  articles  in  the  Sunday  supplements  and 
the  magazines,  was  Captain  Franz  von  Rintelen,  naval 
attache  of  the  German  Embassy  in  Washington,  who  is 
now  enjoying  an  enforced  sojourn  in  a  large  stone  cha- 
teau as  the  guest  of  the  government.  Though  the 
equally  notorious  Madame  Mctorica,  a  titled  adven- 
turess in  the  pay  of  the  Wilhelmstrasse,  filled  several  of 
the  specifications  of  the  secret  agent  of  fiction,  truth 
compels  me  to  destroy  certain  illusions  which  the  pubUc 
has  held  concerning  this  lady  by  stating  that  she  was  by 
no  means  young,  that  she  was  only  passably  good- 
looking,  and  that  she  was  so  far  from  clever  that  her 
ovin  boastfulness  led  to  her  apprehension.  The  other 
enemy  agents  who  operated  in  this  country  were,  for 
the  most  part,  former  privates  in  the  German  Army 
or  petty  officers  and  stewards  on  German  liners,  the 
most  picturesque  of  the  lot,  a  man  named  Bode,  being 
so  inefficient  that  he  was  dismissed  by  his  own  govern- 
ment, whereupon,  being  v^-ithout  funds,  he  surrendered 


"M.  I."  331 

himself  to  the  American  authorities.  He  will  receive 
board  and  lodging  at  government  expense  for  some 
years  to  come.  Though  the  beautiful  young  Madame 
Storch,  who  died  under  mysterious  circumstances  at 
Ellis  Island  a  few  days  after  her  arrest,  possessed  a 
certain  romantic  interest,  she  and  her  three  companions 
were  so  weak  in  character  and  of  such  small-caliber 
intelligence,  that  it  is  exceedingly  doubtful  if  the  Wil- 
heimstrasse  ever  intrusted  them  with  any  important 
work  or  confided  to  them  any  important  secrets.  Let 
it  be  perfectly  clear,  however,  that  nothing  is  further 
from  my  intention  than  to  minimize  the  deadly  gravity 
of  the  German-spy  menace  in  this  countr}'  during  the 
war,  or  to  suggest  that,  had  no  steps  been  taken  to 
check  it,  it  would  not  have  caused  the  loss  of  millions 
of  American  dollars  and  thousands  of  American  lives. 
That  the  national  safety  was  not  more  gravely  im- 
perilled by  these  enemy  agents  was  not  due  to  their  in- 
eflSciency,  or  to  the  weakness  of  the  German  espionage 
system,  but  to  the  efficiency,  resourcefulness,  and  un- 
remitting vigilance  of  the  Division  of  Militar}'  Intelli- 
gence, which,  I  might  add,  frequently  carried  on  its 
work  under  the  most  disheartening  condition. 

Military^  intelligence  is  the  term  applied  to  all  such 
information  as  may  be  of  value  to  the  successful  prose- 
cution of  a  war.  The  Military'  Intelligence  Division 
is  that  branch  of  the  General  Staff  which  is  organized 
to  secure  this  information.  Its  field  of  inquir}-  in- 
cludes the  investigation  of  active  and  potential  enemies, 
allies,  and  neutrals;  their  militar>',  pohtical,  and  eco- 
nomic condition;    their  state  of  mind,  their  secret  ac- 


332      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

tivities  at  home  and  abroad,  and  their  strategic  and 
tactical  plans  for  present  or  future  campaigns.  A  well- 
organized  intelligence  service  provides,  moreover,  for 
estimating  and  safeguarding  the  resources  of  its  own 
country;  for  protecting  war  industries  and  means  of 
transportation;  for  stimulating  the  morale  of  its  troops 
and  of  the  civil  population;  for  frustrating  enemy 
agents  and  preventing  the  dissemination  of  enemy 
propaganda.  Thus  arises  the  distinction  between  the 
positive  and  the  negative  aspects  of  the  service.  The 
former,  known  as  Positive  Intelligence,  concerns  itself 
with  the  collection  and  distribution  of  information. 
It  publishes  estimates  of  the  military,  economic,  politi- 
cal, and  psychological  status  of  various  countries; 
prints  maps  of  enemy  districts,  with  particular  refer- 
ence to  fortifications,  harbors,  and  routes  of  travel; 
deciphers  intercepted  messages,  and  translates  foreign 
documents.  The  Negative  Branch  of  the  service  con- 
cerns itself  with  the  frustration  of  all  agents,  military 
or  civil,  who  are  consciously  or  unconsciously  of  value 
to  the  enemy.  This  is  known  as  Counter-Espionage, 
or  Negative  Intelligence.  It  establishes  a  system  of 
propaganda  designed  to  neutralize  the  propaganda  of 
the  enemy;  it  detects  and  causes  the  arrest  of  spies 
among  the  troops  as  well  as  in  the  civil  population;  it 
censors  news  and  information  given  to  the  public;  it 
prevents  enemy  agents  from  entering  or  leaving  the 
country,  and  it  investigates  the  causes  of  economic 
disturbances  and  unrest. 

Though  military  intelligence  work  was  undertaken 
by  the  army  in  1885,  in  response  to  a  demand  for  in- 


"M.  I."  333 

formation  from  the  Secretary  of  War,  it  was  not  until 
the  United  States  found  itself  an  actual  belligerent  in 
the  Great  War  that  the  immense  importance  of  the 
work  was  fully  realized.  Incredible  as  it  may  seem, 
when  General  Pershing  set  sail  for  France  in  the  spring 
of  191 7,  the  entire  personnel  of  the  Military  Intelligence 
Section,  as  it  was  then  called,  consisted  of  four  officers 
(of  which  one  was  myself)  and  three  clerks.  Due, 
however,  to  the  forcible  arguments  and  the  breadth 
of  vision  of  its  first  chief.  Colonel  Ralph  H.  Van  Deman, 
the  foundation  was  laid  for  the  present  vast  organiza- 
tion, whose  activities  expanded,  at  the  demands  of 
war,  until,  when  the  Armistice  was  signed,  they  virtually 
covered  the  globe.  In  addition  to  the  huge  mihtary 
intelligence  personnel  in  Washington,  a  carefully  or- 
ganized intelligence  service  is  maintained  in  each  camp, 
post,  and  station,  as  well  as  in  the  field.  Though  these 
officers  are  appointed  by  their  respective  division  or 
department  commanders,  the  responsibility  for  their 
instruction  and  the  control  of  their  counter-espionage 
activities  rest  upon  the  Director  of  Military  Intelligence, 
at  present  (June,  1919)  Brigadier- General  Marlborough 
Churchill.  During  the  war  the  Mihtary  Intelligence 
Division  maintained  the  closest  Haison  with  the  Director 
of  Naval  Intelligence,  the  Department  of  Justice,  the 
agents  of  the  departments  of  State,  Labor,  and  the 
Treasury,  the  War  Trade  Board,  the  War  Industries 
Board,  the  Censorship  Board,  the  National  Research 
Council,  the  American  Protective  League,  and  the 
Council  of  National  Defense,  all  of  these  organizations 
being  able,   through   the  medium  of  their  countless 


334      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

branches,  agents,  and  correspondents,  to  provide  Mili- 
tary Intelligence  with  enormous  amounts  of  valuable 
information  which  it  could  not  otherwise  easily  have 
secured. 

The  Administrative  Branch  of  the  Military  Intelli- 
gence Division,  referred  to,  for  the  sake  of  convenience, 
as  M  I  I,  co-ordinates  the  activities  of  the  other  eleven 
sections,  sk  of  which,  M  I  2,  M  I  5,  M  I  6,  M  I  7,  M 
I  8,  and  M  I  9,  form  the  Positive  Branch  of  the  ser- 
vice, the  Negative  Branch  consisting  of  M  I  3,  M  I  4, 
M 1 10,  M I II,  and  M  I  13.  The  Second  Section  (M  I 
2)  is  divided  in  turn  into  five  subsections,  four  of  which 
— Combat,  PoHtical,  Economic,  and  Psychologic — de- 
vote themselves  to  the  collation  of  information,  the 
maintenance  of  the  "Current  Estimate,"  of  which  more 
hereafter,  and  the  furnishing  of  special  reports.  An- 
other subsection  deals  with  the  preparation  of  military 
monographs.  M  I  5  collects  information  for  the  use  of 
the  Positive  Branch  and  supervises  the  military  atta- 
ches. M  1 6  concerns  itself  with  the  translation  of  docu- 
ments for  all  branches  of  the  War  Department.  M  I  7 
has  charge  of  all  maps  and  photographs,  one  of  its  sub- 
sections devoting  itself  to  map  construction  and  an- 
other having  the  custody  of  the  War  Department  map 
collection.  To  M  I  8  is  intrusted  the  solution  of  codes 
and  ciphers,  the  study  of  shorthand  systems,  encoding 
and  decoding,  the  compilation  of  codes,  and  the  main- 
tenance of  a  laboratory  for  the  detection  of  invisible 
inks.  M  I  9  has  supervision  of  the  training  of  intelli- 
gence officers  and  men  for  work  in  the  field.  Turning 
to  the  Negative  Branch  of  the  division,  M  1 3  is  charged 


"M.  I."  335 

with  counter-espionage  within  the  militaty  estabHsh- 
ment,  together  with  collateral  activities  directly  affect- 
ing the  army.  The  eleven  subsections  of  M  I  3  deal 
with  such  diverse  subjects  as  the  preparation  of  bul- 
letins, summaries,  and  surveys;  and  of  instructions  for 
intelligence  officers,  counter-espionage  in  prison  camps, 
disciplinary  barracks,  the  District  of  Columbia,  the 
various  branches  of  the  Staff  and  Line,  and  among  con- 
scientious objectors,  and  the  investigation  of  applicants 
for  commissions.  M  I  4  conducts  counter-espionage 
outside  the  military  service  in  the  United  States  and 
abroad,  with  particular  reference  to  sabotage  and  the 
protection  of  plants  and  means  of  communication,  its 
activities  covering  nearly  the  entire  world.  IM  I  10 
is  charged  with  the  censorship  of  letters,  books,  news- 
papers, and  periodicals,  telegraphs  and  telephones,  and 
radiophotographs  and  motion-pictures,  and  with  a 
general  supervision  of  the  foreign-language  press. 
MI  II  passes  on  passport  appHcations  and,  in  co- 
operation with  certain  other  bureaus,  has  charge  of 
port  control.  MI  13  is  the  Graft  and  Fraud  Section, 
its  work  being  principally  concerned  with  criminal  ac- 
tivities which  may  affect  the  army.  The  present  Mo- 
rale  Branch  of  the  General  Staff  consists,  as  its  name 
indicates,  in  maintaining  the  morale  of  the  army,  which 
includes  the  encouragement  and  supervision  of  soldier 
publications,  military  advertising,  camp-posters,  and 
the  treatment  of  the  foreign-speaking  and  negro  soldier 
problems  originated  as  the  JNIilitar}^  ]\Iorale  Section 
of  Military  Intelligence. 

M  I  2,  as  I  have  already  explained,  is  that  section 


336      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  whose  duty  is  to 
collect,  collate,  and  distribute  foreign  intelligence,  its 
Combat  Subsection  being  charged  with  the  prepara- 
tion, maintenance,  and  dissemination  of  combat  and 
military  information  on  all  countries.  The  work  of  the 
subsection  is  classified  as  "active,"  "static,"  and  "en- 
cyclopedic." The  "active"  work  consisted,  during  the 
war,  of  the  preparation  of  material  for  the  Daily  Sum- 
mary and  the  Weekly  Summary,  and  of  material  for 
transmission  to  other  governmental  departments;  the 
preparation  of  Front  Summaries  and  Strength  Sum- 
maries; the  transmission  of  a  special  weekly  report  to 
the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  in  Siberia;  the 
estabhshment  and  maintenance  of  line-maps  of  the 
various  active  fronts  in  the  offices  of  the  Chief  of  Staff, 
the  Secretary  of  State,  the  War  Council,  the  War  Col- 
lege, and  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  In  addi- 
tion this  subsection  was  charged  with  the  preparation 
of  a  weekly  resume  of  the  situation  on  all  fronts  to  be 
presented  to  the  heads  of  the  several  army  bureaus,  of 
the  industrial  bureaus,  and  the  military  committees 
of  the  Senate  and  the  House.  The  "static"  work  con- 
sisted in  keeping  up  to  date  the  combat  portion  of  the 
Current  Estimate  of  the  Strategic  Situation,  where  was 
presented  in  concise  form  a  wealth  of  combat,  eco- 
nomic, ethnic,  political,  and  psychologic  information 
for  ready  reference  by  the  Chief  of  Staff  and  other 
general  officers  who  were  compelled  to  keep  their 
fingers  constantly  on  the  pulse  of  the  enemy  and  Allied 
nations.  The  "encyclopedic"  work  consisted  of  the 
compilation  of  military  and  combat  information  of  a 
permanent  character. 


"M.  I."  337 

During  the  war  there  were  few  more  interesting 
places  in  Washington — and  none,  perhaps,  more  diffi- 
cult to  obtain  access  to — than  the  map-room  of  the 
Mihtary  Intelligence  Di\'ision.  On  its  walls  were  dis- 
played every  conceivable  sort  of  map  and  diagrams 
depicting  the  movements  of  the  armies  on  the  various 
fronts.  Not  only  were  there  large-scale  maps  of  the 
European  fronts  on  which  our  troops  were  fighting, 
but  there  were  likewise  maps  on  which  rows  of  tiny 
colored  flags  indicated  the  positions  of  the  opposing 
forces  in  Russia,  Siberia,  Macedonia,  Mesopotamia, 
Palestine,  China,  German  East  Africa,  German  South- 
west Africa,  and  the  Cameroons.  These  maps  recorded, 
not  only  from  day  to  day,  but  frequently  from  hour  to 
hour,  the  advance  or  retreat  of  the  lines  on  the  various 
fronts,  besides  representing  in  graphic  form  the  loca- 
tion of  the  enemy  forces  and  indicating  any  economic 
conditions  which  were  of  particular  interest  at  the 
moment.  Thanks  to  the  completeness  of  our  informa- 
tion and  the  speed  with  which  it  was  transmitted  from 
the  battle-fronts  to  Washington,  the  Director  of  IMili- 
tary  Intelligence  could  sit  in  his  map-room  and  follow 
the  progress  of  a  great  battle  on  the  Western  Front  as 
readily  as  the  crowd  in  front  of  a  newspaper  office  can 
follow  a  battle  on  a  baseball  diamond  by  means  of  the 
automatic  score-board. 

In  addition  to  the  unceasing  care  and  study  neces- 
sary for  keeping  the  maps  of  the  various  fronts  up  to 
the  minute,  and  for  anticipating  events  so  that  maps 
which  might  be  needed  in  the  near  future  would  be 
ready,  as,  for  example,  when  we  first  contemplated 


338      THE  ARIMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

sending  an  expedition  to  Italy  or  when  we  learned  that 
the  British  were  preparing  to  invade  Palestine,  the 
staff  of  the  map-room  had  many  other  duties.  It  veri- 
fied every  name  which  occurred  in  the  cables  which 
were  constantly  being  received  from  every  corner  of 
the  globe  (and  if  you  have  ever  seen  what  a  cable 
operator  can  do  to  geographical  names  you  will  appre- 
ciate how  far  from  a  sinecure  this  task  was);  it  an- 
swered periodic  letters  from  the  Custodian  of  Alien 
Property  requesting  information  as  to  the  situation 
and  possession  of  various  enemy-owned  estates,  and 
it  dealt  with  demands  for  every  conceivable  sort  of 
information  from  every  conceivable  quarter.  For  ex- 
ample, the  National  Geographic  Society  asked  for  the 
boundaries  of  the  Ukraine,  which  the  society's  geo- 
graphic experts  had  been  unable  to  determine  them- 
selves; the  Naval  Intelligence  Division  inquired  about 
maps  of  northern  France  and  where  it  could  obtain 
them;  the  Shipping  Board  wanted  information  re- 
garding French  coastwise  services.  When  the  Siberian 
Expeditionary  Force  was  being  organized  it  became 
imperative  that  its  commander  should  have  an  Enghsh 
map  of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway.  No  such  map 
had  ever  been  made,  but  by  a  stupendous  effort  the 
officers  of  the  subsection  succeeded  in  translating  three 
sections  of  the  available  Russian  map.  The  other  sec- 
tions were  translated  by  the  War  College,  and  the 
whole  was  reproduced  by  the  Military  Intelligence 
Printing-Office.  The  work  was,  of  course,  hastily  done, 
and  later  had  to  be  revised,  but  for  the  moment  it 
served  its  purpose  well,  and  the  Expeditionary  Force 


"M.  I."  339 

was  able  to  take  with  it  the  only  complete  map  of  that 
system  in  English  in  existence. 

In  addition  to  the  great  number  of  combat,  stra- 
tegic, and  physical  maps  covering  the  belligerent  comi- 
tries  and  the  various  theatres  of  war,  complete  sets  of 
military  maps  of  the  neutral  nations  were  also  kept 
available,  for  there  was  never  any  certainty  as  to  how 
far  the  conflagration  might  extend.  While  hostilities 
were  in  progress  the  subsection  responded  to  a  con- 
stant stream  of  demands  for  estimates  of  the  military 
situation,  of  the  enemy's  strength  and  resources,  and 
for  forecasts  of  his  plans.  An  enormous  amount  of 
information  relative  to  German  and  Austrian  muni- 
tions, tanks,  gas,  aircraft,  artiller>',  and  infantr>^  equip- 
ment was  also  codified  and  distributed  in  pamphlet 
form  to  those  branches  of  the  War  Department  par- 
ticularly concerned.  Statistical  reports,  showing,  for 
example,  the  percentage  of  French  and  British  officers 
wounded  and  killed  during  stated  periods,  were  of 
great  assistance  to  the  War  Department  in  determining 
the  number  of  officers  to  be  assigned  to  the  various 
draft  contingents  and  for  figuring  the  replacements 
which  would  be  required.  A  report  showing  the  hous- 
ing facilities  for  planes  possessed  by  the  French  Air 
Service  materially  aided  our  own  Department  of  Aero- 
nautics. The  rate  of  pay  for  prisoners  of  war  was 
fixed  by  the  Adjutant-General's  Department  with  the 
aid  of  tables  furnished  by  this  subsection.  Nor  did 
the  work  of  the  subsection  end  with  the  signing  of  the 
Armistice.  If  an}'thing,  it  increased,  for  it  was  called 
upon  to  furnish  all  sorts  of  highly  technical  informa- 


340      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

tion  for  the  use  of  the  peace  delegates.  The  most  in- 
teresting and  important  data  thus  suppHed  was  a 
translation,  with  copious  notes,  of  a  Russian  document 
describing  in  great  detail  the  growth  of  the  movement 
for  the  political  independence  of  Siberia,  a  complete 
plan  for  the  organization  of  voting  districts,  the  com- 
position of  scores  of  territorial  councils  and  commis- 
sions, and  the  effect  on  political  life  in  Siberia  of  the 
revolutions  in  European  Russia. 

Long  before  the  entry  of  the  United  States  into 
the  war  it  was  recognized  that  the  struggle  for  the 
control  of  raw  materials  was  fully  as  important  a  factor 
in  the  great  conflict  as  the  struggle  of  the  armies  them- 
selves, and  that  the  food  supply  exercised  a  greater 
effect  on  the  morale  of  a  nation  than  its  casualties  on 
the  battle-field.  Other  factors  which,  it  was  realized, 
had  to  be  taken  into  consideration  in  estimating  the 
fighting  ability  and  staying  powers  of  a  nation  were 
labor  conditions,  finance,  shipping  and  ship-building, 
all  of  which  bear  an  intimate  relation  to  the  production 
of  munitions  and  essential  supplies.  There  existed 
government  agencies,  such  as  the  Department  of  Com- 
merce and  Labor  and  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  as 
well  as  many  others  born  of  the  emergency,  that  were 
organized  for  the  purpose  of  collecting  data  on  all  these 
subjects,  but  the  results  of  their  activities  were  not 
readily  available  for  the  purpose  of  the  General  Staff. 
As  a  consequence  the  need  arose  for  a  section  of  the 
Military  Intelligence  Division  to  gather,  collate,  and 
co-ordinate  such  economic  information,  and,  in  partic- 
ular, to  interpret  it  from  the  mihtary  standpoint.     The 


"M.  I."  341 

Economic    Subsection    of    the    Positive    Branch   was 
created,  therefore,  to  suppl}-  this  need. 

The  chief,  and  indeed  the  most  important,  function 
of  the  subsection  was  the  compilation  and  the  con- 
stant revision — based  on  the  latest  and  most  accurate 
data  obtainable — of  the  economic  portion  of  the  Cur- 
rent Estimate  of  the  Strategic  Sitnatioti.  Dealing  as  it 
did  with  vital  economic  conditions  in  all  the  countries 
of  the  world,  it  enabled  the  high  command  of  the  A.  E. 
F.  and  the  other  organizations,  both  military  and  civil, 
to  whom  it  was  distributed,  to  keep  in  constant  and 
intimate  touch  with  the  economic  situation  through- 
out the  world.  This  work  constituted,  in  fact,  an 
up-to-the-minute  encyclopedia  of  the  most  vital  eco- 
nomic factors  as  they  related  to  the  strategic  situation. 
The  I.  W.  W.  troubles  in  the  spruce  forests  of  the 
Northwest,  the  spread  of  boll-weevil  in  the  cotton- 
growing  districts  of  the  South  and  of  hoof-and-mouth 
disease  on  the  Texas  cattle-ranges,  riots  in  Korea, 
revolutions  in  Russia,  the  assassination  of  a  dictator 
in  a  Central  American  republic,  a  shortage  of  the 
Brazilian  cofTee  crop,  a  change  of  government  in  Chile, 
a  textile  strike  in  Lowell,  Mass.,  the  price  of  bread  in 
Bavaria,  the  increased  use  of  paper  clothing  and  leather 
substitutes  in  Prussia,  the  speech  of  a  Socialist  deputy 
in  Paris,  all  were  carefully  weighed  and  given  due  con- 
sideration, the  conclusions  thus  arrived  at,  when  con- 
densed and  put  into  graphic  form,  enabling  the  military 
chiefs  in  Washington  to  gauge  with  amazing  accuracy 
the  economic  conditions  throughout  the  world  and  to 
forecast  the  effect  which  they  might  be  expected  to 
have  on  the  fighting  armies. 


342      THE   ARIMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

Commencing  early  in  1918,  the  subsection  con- 
tributed to  the  confidential  Weekly  Intelligence  Sum- 
mary specially  written  articles  dealing  with  particular 
phases  of  the  economic  situation  in  various  countries, 
such  as  ^' Germany s  Raw  Materials,^'  ''The  Food  Sup- 
plies of  Germany,'^  "  Turkish  Finances, ^^  and  the  like. 
These  articles,  which  were  frequently  accompanied  by 
specially  prepared  maps,  tables,  and  diagrams,  were 
all  of  a  confidential  nature,  and  were  of  great  impor- 
tance to  a  complete  understanding  of  the  strategic 
situation  and  its  constantly  shifting  phases.  The  sign- 
ing of  the  Armistice  naturally  brought  about  a  sudden 
change  in  the  nature  of  the  subsection's  work,  its 
articles  becoming  more  monographic  in  character  and 
dealing  with  conditions  from  all  points  of  view  but 
with  particular  reference  to  the  future.  Such  articles 
included  "  The  Coal  Situation  in  Germany, ^^  which  was 
a  detailed  account  of  Germany's  use  of  the  c^al-fields 
which  she  occupied  during  the  war;  "  The  Left  Bank  of 
the  Rhine,"  being  a  comprehensive  study  of  this  terri- 
tory from  the  view-point  of  the  effect  which  its  neutrali- 
zation would  have  on  the  future  of  Europe;  "Eco- 
nomic Resources  of  Czechoslovakia,"  with  a  valuable 
map  of  railroads  and  mineral  deposits  in  that  newly 
born  nation;  "Palestine,"  with  an  account  of  the  re- 
sources, railroads,  and  prospects  of  the  "State  of  Zion "; 
"Baltic  Ports,"  a  monograph  which  showed  the  neces- 
sity of  developing  these  ports  and  their  hinterlands  for 
the  development  of  Russia.  Upon  the  despatch  of  the 
American  expedition  to  Siberia,  the  Economic  Sub- 
section produced  a  weekly  economic  report  on  Russia, 


"M.  I."  343 

with  particular  reference  to  the  Asiatic  territories, 
which  was  regularly  fonvarded  to  the  commander  of 
the  expedition  at  Vladivostok.  There  were  also  pre- 
pared for  the  use  of  our  forces  in  Siberia  monographs 
on  the  food  and  raw-material  resources,  the  communi- 
cations, the  industries,  and  the  finances  of  Russia, 
these  proving  of  enormous  value  to  the  staff  of  the  ex- 
pedition, which  was  operating  in  a  region  of  which 
next  to  nothing  was  known  save  by  a  handful  of  scien- 
tists and  explorers.  Among  the  countless  other  reports 
prepared  by  the  subsection  perhaps  the  most  important 
was  the  one  on  the  fortifications  and  the  territory  sur- 
rounding the  great  German  stronghold  of  Metz,  which, 
had  the  war  continued,  would  have  been  attacked  by 
our  forces.  The  completeness  and  exactitude  of  the 
information  contained  in  this  report,  which  was  veri- 
fied by  persons  familiar  with  the  fortress  and  its  en- 
virons, would,  I  imagine,  have  given  the  chiefs  of  the 
German  Intelligence  Bureau  some  very  uncomforta- 
ble nights,  had  they  known  of  its  existence. 

Now,  though  the  non-military  person  may  not  have 
realized  it,  an  exceedingly  important  factor  in  the  suc- 
cessful conduct  of  operations  is  an  adequate  supply  of 
up-to-date  geographical  monographs  and  handbooks, 
describing  in  completest  detail  the  regions  where  the 
operations  are  taking  place.  Imagine,  for  example, 
how  much  difficulty  you  would  experience  and  how 
little  information  you  would  obtain  if  you  were  to  visit 
the  galleries  of  the  Vatican,  the  museums  of  Florence, 
or  the  churches  of  Venice  without  a  guide-book.  As 
few  of  the  statues  and  pictures  are  labelled,  you  could 


344      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

only  hazard  a  guess  as  to  what  you  were  seeing;  you 
would  not  know  where  to  go  next  or  how  to  get  there. 
The  same  thing  holds  almost  equally  true  of  armies. 
Land  an  expeditionary  force  in  Patagonia,  let  us  say, 
and  imagine  how  helpless  it  would  be  if  it  had  no 
accurate  and  detailed  information  as  to  the  topog- 
raphy of  the  country,  the  size  and  locations  of  the 
towns  and  villages,  the  nature  of  the  crops,  and  the  cus- 
toms of  the  natives.  To  fill  this  urgent  need  there  was 
created  the  Military  Monograph  Subsection.  The 
gradual  evolution  in  the  methods  of  this  subsection 
may  be  summed  up  by  saying  that  stiff  official  letters, 
the  very  tone  of  which  was  about  as  reassuring  to  the 
recipient  as  a  court  summons,  have  given  place  to  in- 
formal, friendly  communications  which  immediately 
create  a  bond  of  personal  sympathy  between  the  In- 
telligence Division  and  the  person  from  whom  informa- 
tion is  desired;  the  questionnaires  sent  out  by  the  sub- 
section to  those  believed  to  have  special  knowledge 
of  certain  regions  have  dwindled  from  ponderous  and 
forbidding  volumes,  the  mere  labor  involved  in  an- 
swering which  was  appalling,  to  single  pages  of  easily 
comprehended  questions;  and  sets  of  stereotyped  queries 
have,  wherever  possible,  been  replaced  by  intimate 
personal  interviews.  In  other  words,  letters  which 
addressed  the  recipient  as  "Sir"  were  so  humanized 
that,  when  the  war  ended,  they  frequently  began 
''Dear  Bill." 

The  most  important  work  of  the  Military  Mono- 
graph Subsection  was  the  preparation  of  military  hand- 
books which  described,  with  almost  incredible  wealth 


"M.  I."  345 

of  detail,  the  regions  in  which  our  forces  were  operating 
or  in  which  they  might  operate  at  some  future  time, 
the  volumes  being  by  no  means  confined  to  Europe 
and  Asiatic  Russia.  The  method  followed  in  the  prep- 
aration of  these  small,  pocket-sized,  linen-covered  vol- 
umes was  as  follows:  From  standard  sources,  such  as 
Baedeker's  and  Murray's  guides,  the  best  possible  de- 
scription of  a  given  region  or  route  is  compiled,  or, 
should  guide-books  on  the  region  in  question  be  un- 
obtainable, an  account  is  obtained  from  some  experi- 
enced and  reliable  traveller.  This  skeleton  is  then 
enlarged,  improved,  and  brought  up  to  date  by  the 
careful  perusal  of  consular  and  other  reports  and  of 
all  sorts  of  confidential  documents  issued  by  our  own 
and  other  governments,  and  by  reference  to  reliable 
books  of  travel.  An  even  more  fruitful  method  of 
obtaining  new  and  valuable  information  is  through 
interviews  with  travellers,  explorers,  mining  engi- 
neers, consuls,  commercial  travellers,  sea-captains, 
and  others  who  have  had  opportunities  to  familiarize 
themselves  with  the  regions  about  which  information 
is  desired.  If  these  men  were  asked  to  sit  down  and 
dictate  accounts  of  their  observations,  the  results  would 
probably,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  prove  highly  un- 
satisfactory, but  if  a  written  account  of  the  region 
under  discussion  is  given  them,  it  invariably  acts  as  a 
great  stimulus  to  their  memories.  Though  a  man  may 
not  be  able  to  write  as  good  an  account  from  first-hand 
knowledge  as  the  intelligence  officer  has  prepared  from 
material  obtained  in  a  library,  he  is  easily  able  to  point 
out  errors,  to  suggest  additions,  and  in  other  ways  to 


346      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

improve  the  version  placed  before  him.  The  last  and 
potentially  the  most  valuable  of  the  methods  used  in 
gathering  information  for  these  handbooks  is  the 
employment  of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division's 
own  agents,  such  as  military  attaches,  diplomatic  and 
consular  ofhcers,  and  other  civilian  agents  who  are 
sent  to  foreign  countries  with  specific  instructions  as 
to  the  information  which  it  is  desired  to  obtain.  I 
might  add  that  this  has  shown  itself  to  be  the  most 
satisfactory  source  of  information  for  monographs  and 
handbooks.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  each  of 
these  handbooks— and  already  a  score  or  more  of  them 
have  been  completed— represents  the  combined  knowl- 
edge of  from  forty  to  a  hundred  people. 

The  Siberian  handbooks  published  by  M.  I.  un- 
doubtedly present  the  fullest  and  most  accurate  date 
on  routes  of  transportation  in  that  country  to  be  found 
anywhere  save  only  in  the  archives  of  the  Russian, 
Japanese,  and  German  armies.  The  handbook  en- 
titled Southwestern  Russia  contains  minute  descrip- 
tions of  all  the  ports  on  the  Black  Sea  from  Varna,  in 
Bulgaria,  around  to  Batoum,  in  the  Caucasus.  It  also 
contains  such  information  as  would  be  required  by  an 
expedition  in  regard  to  the  selection  of  ports  for  the 
disembarkation  of  troops  and  supplies,  the  garrisoning 
of  these  ports,  and  their  maintenance  as  bases  for  opera- 
tions in  the  interior.  In  August,  1918,  when  the  Ameri- 
can Expeditionary  Force  was  about  to  set  sail  for 
Vladivostok,  the  Mihtary  Monograph  Subsection  was 
suddenly  called  upon  to  furnish  the  staff  of  the  expedi- 
tion with  a  handbook  on  eastern   Siberia.     Though 


"M.  I."  347 

much  of  the  necessaty  material  was  contained  in  docu- 
ments which  had  not  yet  been  translated,  and  though 
there  were  available  only  a  few  persons  who  were  in- 
timately acquainted  with  the  region  in  question,  the 
subsection,  by  placing  its  entire  personnel  at  the  task 
and  by  working  eighteen  hours  a  day,  succeeded  in 
producing  a  preliminary  but  really  admirable  little 
handbook  which  was  mimeographed  in  time  to  go 
with  the  expedition.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add 
that  the  preparation  of  these  monographs  demanded 
men  of  exceptional  ability  who  possessed  wide  and 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  regions  whereof  they  wrote. 
In  order  to  provide  such  a  corps  of  writers,  commis- 
sions in  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  were  given 
to  travellers,  explorers,  authors,  scientists,  archaeolo- 
gists, and  others  whose  work  or  pleasure  had  acquainted 
them  with  the  world's  far  places. 

The  Propaganda  Subsection  of  Military  Intelli- 
gence was  formed  for  the  purpose  of  studying  enemy 
propaganda,  to  combat  it  by  means  of  suitable  counter- 
propaganda,  and  to  take  steps  for  the  dissemination  in 
the  enemy  armies  and  enemy  countries  of  positive  prop- 
aganda of  our  own.  Though  propaganda,  as  used  by 
the  United  States,  was  nothing  but  the  truth,  it  had 
been  so  abused  by  the  Central  Powers  as  to  have  be- 
come almost  a  term  of  reproach,  the  American  Govern- 
ment steadily  opposing  its  use — at  least  under  that 
name — during  the  earlier  months  of  the  war.  German 
propaganda  had,  indeed,  achieved  such  an  unenviable 
name  that  it  was  found  advisable,  in  the  spring  of  1918, 
to  change  the  name  of  this  branch  to  "Psychologic 


348      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

Subsection."  Misleading  and  frequently  flagrantly 
untruthful  though  their  propaganda  was,  the  Central 
Powers  had  made  use  of  it  with  such  marked  success, 
particularly  in  Italy — for  the  disaster  at  Caporetto  was 
primarily  due  to  Austrian  propaganda  introduced  into 
the  ItaHan  lines — that  our  government  was  reluctantly 
compelled  to  recognize  its  efficacy  and  to  initiate  propa- 
ganda of  its  own,  this  delicate  and  highly  psychological 
work  being  intrusted  to  a  civilian  organization — the 
Committee  on  Public  Information.  Despite  the  vast 
amount  of  publicity  which  has  been  given  to  the  work 
of  Mr.  Creel's  organization,  truth  compels  me  to  assert 
that  it  was  very  far  from  being  the  success  which  the 
public  has  been  led  to  believe.  Memorandums  con- 
cerning the  foreign  situation,  together  with  comments 
and  suggestions,  were  sent  almost  daily  by  Military 
Intelligence  to  the  committee,  thus  giving  the  civilian 
organization  the  military  point  of  view  and  bringing 
to  its  attention  urgent  calls  for  American  propaganda 
made  by  its  representatives  in  many  parts  of  the  world. 
This  should  have  been  of  great  value  to  the  committee, 
since  through  its  attaches,  agents,  and  other  sources, 
Military  Intelligence  was  able  to  obtain  a  vast  amount 
of  information  about  enemy  propaganda  and  morale 
which  would  not  otherwise  have  been  accessible  to 
Mr.  Creel's  organization.  Although  the  committee 
agreed  in  general  with  the  Intelligence  Division  as  to 
the  scope  of  our  propaganda,  lack  of  funds  and  of  ex- 
perienced personnel  made  it  unable  to  act,  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  on  the  information  thus  given. 
Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  in  view  of  the  immense  im- 


"M.  I."  349 

portance  attached  to  the  use  of  propaganda  by  other 
nations,  it  was  not  until  after  the  Armistice  had  been 
signed  that  the  army  was  formally  authorized  to  make 
use  of  this  potent  weapon.  I  mention  this  because  it 
illustrates  how  difficult  it  is  to  obtain  a  satisfactory 
liaison  between  two  such  bodies  as  the  Military  In- 
telligence Division  and  the  Committee  on  Public  In- 
formation, whose  respective  activities  were  based  on 
entirely  dissimilar  foundations,  and  who  carried  on 
their  work  along  entirely  different  lines.  This  is  not 
saying,  however,  that  the  officers  of  the  Psychologic 
Subsection  attached  to  the  expeditionary  forces  in 
France  were  idle  all  this  time;  on  the  contrary,  they 
succeeded  in  getting  three  million  leaflets  over  the 
lines. 

Early  in  the  spring  of  19 18  Military  Intelligence 
recommended  the  immediate  purchase  of  6,500  balloons 
to  be  used  for  distributing  great  quantities  of  propa- 
ganda leaflets  behind  the  German  front.  As,  however, 
a  sufficiently  large  appropriation  could  not  be  obtained, 
and  as  it  was  feared  that  there  would  not  be  an  ade- 
quate supply  of  gas  for  the  purpose  in  the  A.  E.  F.,  it 
was  finally  decided  to  order  only  500  balloons.  Though 
delivery  was  promised  by  November  i,  they  did  not 
arrive  then,  nor  were  they  received  before  the  Armis- 
tice was  signed,  such  few  balloons  as  were  used  by  the 
Propaganda  Section  of  the  A.  E.  F.  being  British  ones. 
These  were  paper  affairs,  about  nine  feet  long  and 
carrying  four  pounds  of  leaflets  strung  on  a  slow- 
burning  12-inch  fuse  in  such  a  manner  that  they  were 
dropped  in  small  bunches,  thus  securing  a  wide  area 


3SO      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

of  distribution.  But  bad  weather,  the  shortage  of 
hydrogen-gas,  the  difficulties  in  transporting  the  gas- 
cyhnders,  and  the  rapid  changes  in  the  battle-Hne 
combined  to  make  the  number  of  balloons  actually 
despatched  very  small.  Great  expectations  were  based, 
however,  on  the  balloon  campaign  which  was  planned 
for  the  winter  of  1918-1919  against  interior  Germany, 
particularly  the  Rhine  towns.  A  large  number  of 
leaflets  were  also  distributed  by  American  aviators, 
who,  taking  their  lives  in  their  hands,  frequently  flew 
so  low  that  they  could  see  the  Germans  picking  up  the 
literature  which  came  fluttering  down  on  them  from 
the  skies. 

In  order  to  intelligently  distribute  propaganda 
by  balloon,  it  was  first  of  all  necessary  to  ascertain  the 
actual  state  of  the  enemy's  morale,  which  was  prin- 
cipally done  by  questioning  prisoners.  The  officers  in 
charge  of  the  work — all  of  whom  possessed,  of  course, 
a  fluent  knowledge  of  German — after  carefully  study- 
ing the  daily  intelligence  reports  at  General  Head- 
quarters, would  visit  the  war-cages  near  Toul  and 
Souilly  and  hold  long  interviews  with  prisoners  of  all 
ranks  and  from  all  parts  of  the  empire.  By  this 
means  it  was  possible  to  gauge  with  a  considerable  de- 
gree of  accuracy  the  existing  conditions  beyond  the 
Rhine  and  the  degree  of  importance  which  various  sec- 
tions of  the  German  people  attached  to  America's 
entry  into  the  war.  Arguments  which  had  been  sug- 
gested as  suitable  for  propaganda  use  were  tried  out 
on  the  prisoners  and  their  effect  noted.  Specimens  of 
Allied  propaganda  were  discussed  with  them  and  they 


''M.  I."  351 

were  asked  to  give  their  opinions  of  it.  A  sufficient 
knowledge  was  thus  gained  of  the  Teutons'  mental 
processes  to  give  the  officers  of  the  Propaganda  Sec- 
tion a  fairly  accurate  idea  of  the  sort  of  arguments 
which  would  make  the  strongest  appeal.  The  text  of 
the  proposed  hterature  was  then  prepared  and,  after 
being  approved  by  General  Headquarters,  was  printed 
in  Paris,  the  leaflets  being  sent  to  the  field-stations 
which  the  Propaganda  Section  had  estabhshed  at 
Bar-le-Duc  and  Toul.  As  a  result  of  the  close  Haison 
maintained  with  the  Air  Service,  leaflets  were  sent  to 
the  various  flying-fields  for  distribution  by  airplane, 
careful  records  being  kept  of  the  areas  thus  covered. 

Almost  from  the  start  the  liveliest  interest  was 
shown  and  the  heartiest  co-operation  afforded  by  all 
branches  of  the  army  concerned.  The  Meteorological 
Section  of  the  Signal  Corps  carried  on  an  elaborate 
series  of  experiments  to  determine  the  rate  of  ascension 
of  the  various  types  of  balloons.  The  G-2's  of  many 
corps  and  divisions  constantly  sent  in  requests  for 
propaganda  and  offered  many  suggestions.  And  the 
aviators,  who  were,  after  all,  the  ones  most  directly 
concerned,  showed  not  the  slightest  hesitation  in  under- 
taking the  exceedingly  dangerous  work  of  distribution, 
for  more  than  one  German  commander  announced 
that  he  would  execute  any  flyer  captured  in  the  act  of 
distributing  propagandist  literature.  In  only  one  quar- 
ter was  opposition  encountered.  That  was  where  the 
out-of-date  conviction  was  still  held  that  ''propaganda 
has  no  place  during  operations." 

Nearly  a  score  of  types  of  leaflets  were  distributed 


352      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

by  airplane  or  balloon.  Among  the  most  successful  was 
one  known  as  the ''  Prisoner  Leaflet,"  containing  a  trans- 
lation of  an  extract  from  the  orders  prescribing  the 
treatment  to  be  accorded  by  the  A.  E.  F.  to  prisoners  of 
war.  Appended  to  it  was  a  list  of  rations  issued  to  the 
American  soldier  and  prescribed  for  enemy  prisoners. 
More  than  a  million  copies  of  this  leaflet  were  sent 
over  the  enemy  lines.  The  "Prisoner  Post-Card" 
leaflet  was  a  variation  of  the  one  just  described,  being 
printed  in  close  imitation  of  the  German  Feldpostkarte. 
This  was  predicated  on  the  idea  that  the  first  interest 
of  the  German  soldier  was  solicitude  for  his  family  and 
that  the  Feldpostkarte  form  was  one  to  which  he  was 
accustomed.  A  number  of  these  were  found  on  the 
persons  of  prisoners.  Another  leaflet  had  a  picture 
of  a  file  of  soldiers  rapidly  increasing  in  size,  thereby 
impressing  even  the  most  iUiterate  of  the  enemy  with 
the  amazing  expansion  of  the  American  Army.  Still 
another  contained  the  German  request  for  an  armistice 
and  President  Wilson's  reply.  The  principal  reason 
for  dropping  these  over  the  German  troops  was  the 
belief,  which  proved  to  be  wefl  founded,  that  their  full 
import,  and  indeed  even  their  complete  texts,  had  been 
kept  from  reaching  the  German  soldier.  In  addition 
to  the  above,  the  Propaganda  Section  distributed  some 
20,000  copies  of  a  leaflet  designed  to  appeal  to  those 
natives  of  Alsace-Lorraine  serving  in  the  German 
armies. 

The  leaflets  intended  for  the  Alsace-Lorrainers 
were  the  work  of  Captain  Osamm  of  the  4th  Corps, 
and  were  part  of  a  plan  which  was  to  culminate  in  a 


"M.  I."  353 

venturesome  attempt  at  fraternization.  Captain 
Osamm  was  perfectly  familiar  with  German  Army 
organization  and  knew  the  names  of  hundreds  of 
German  officers  and  men  in  the  224th  Division,  which 
was  largely  recruited  from  the  natives  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine.  After  the  224th  had  been  all  but  snowed 
under  by  the  leaflets,  and  after  a  sufficient  time  had 
elapsed  for  the  arguments  which  they  contained  to 
penetrate  the  German  mind,  Captain  Osamm  planned 
to  crawl  out  into  No  Man's  Land,  and  when  within 
speaking  distance  of  the  German  patrols  to  call  out 
the  names  of  individuals  in  that  division.  He  admitted 
that  he  expected  to  be  met  by  a  few  bursts  of  machine- 
gun  fire,  but  he  was  convinced  that  the  patrols  would 
eventually  themselves  come  forward  to  meet  him, 
M^hereupon,  by  a  verbal  reinforcement  of  the  argu- 
ments contained  in  the  leaflets,  he  expected  to  bring 
about  wholesale  desertions.  He  based  his  assumption 
that  the  enemy  would  respond  to  his  summons,  I 
imagine,  on  the  British  contention  that  all  Germans 
had  originally  been  waiters,  and  that,  if  one  were  to 
shout,  "Hi,  Fritz,  bring  me  a  beer!"  they  would  re- 
spond from  force  of  habit.  The  beginning  of  active 
operations  abruptly  halted  this  amazing  performance, 
however,  thereby  deeply  disappomting  the  adventurous 
captain. 

The  speed  with  which  events  moved  during  the 
last  few  weeks  of  the  war  prevented  the  trial  of  a  dis- 
tinctively American  idea,  known  as  The  International 
Bulletin.  This  was  to  be  issued  in  the  form  of  a  news- 
paper, printed  in  parallel  columns  of  English  and  Ger- 


354      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

man,  and  distributed  on  both  sides  of  the  line.  The 
intention  was  for  the  American  forces  to  honestly 
share  a  newspaper  with  the  Germans !  It  was  believed 
that  the  very  frankness  of  such  a  proceeding  would 
serve  to  diminish  the  suspicions  of  the  enemy  that  aU 
leaflets  which  fell  into  their  hands  were  "doctored.'* 
The  bulletin,  as  planned,  was  to  contain  news  items, 
chiefly  concerning  the  A.  E.  F.,  maps,  pictures,  and 
cartoons,  the  intention  being  to  distribute  it  in  large 
numbers  among  our  own  troops  as  well  as  behind  the 
enemy  lines;  then  to  collect  the  old  copies  from  the 
Americans,  together  with  any  comments  which  the 
fun-loving  Yanks  may  have  written  on  the  margins, 
and  send  them  over  to  the  Boche  by  balloon. 

What  were  the  results  of  this  propaganda  offensive  ? 
Making  an  estimate  of  how  it  affected  the  enemy  is 
like  reporting  on  the  effects  of  artiUery-fire  or  bombing 
raids,  for  they  happened  on  the  other  side  of  the  line, 
"  where  visibility  was  poor."  Any  one  who  has  listened 
to  the  interrogation  of  German  prisoners  can  hardly 
fail  to  have  been  struck  by  the  wide  variance  in  the 
replies  given  by  soldiers  from  the  same  unit.  Ques- 
tioned about  the  effect  of  a  barrage,  for  example,  one 
man  would  state  that  it  destroyed  the  German  wire, 
demolished  their  trenches,  and  cut  their  communica- 
tions, and  that  he  and  his  companions  were  demorahzed 
and  panic-stricken;  while  another  prisoner,  from  the 
same  company,  perhaps,  would  defiantly  insist  that 
the  Yankee  shell  did  no  great  damage,  that  casualties 
were  light,  and  that  he  never  missed  a  meal  or  a  night's 
sleep.     Or,  when  interrogated  in  regard  to  the  damage 


"M.  V*  355 

caused  by  our  bombing  squadrons,  one  prisoner  would 
insist  that,  beyond  killing  a  cow  and  breaking  a  few 
windows,  absolutely  no  harm  was  done,  while  another, 
visibly  shaken  by  his  experiences,  would  assert  that 
all  that  remained  of  the  town  in  which  he  was  billeted 
was  a  hydrant  and  two  paving-stones.  German  offi- 
cers, when  questioned  about  the  effect  of  our  propa- 
ganda, invariably  made  the  stock  reply,  "The  men 
laughed  at  the  leaflets,"  but  the  enemy  privates  gen- 
erally admitted  that  they  read  and  believed  the  flug 
blatter.  On  the  other  hand,  captured  officers  frequently 
complained  about  the  depressing  effect  which  the  leaflets 
had  on  the  morale  of  their  men,  while  many  privates 
stoutly  denied  having  been  influenced  by  propaganda, 
even  when  the  much-thumbed  leaflets  were  found  on 
their  persons.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
no  soldier  likes  to  attribute  his  defeat  to  pieces  of  paper; 
he  prefers  to  blame  it  on  lack  of  food,  the  enemy's  over- 
whelming superiority  of  numbers,  and  to  his  prepon- 
derance of  artillery  and  machine-guns.  If  a  historian 
ever  has  an  opportunity  to  delve  into  the  files  of  the 
German  Intelligence  Bureau,  however,  I  imagine  that 
he  will  find  ample  evidence  that  the  showers  of  leaflets 
falling  from  the  blue  played  no  inconsiderable  part  in 
the  collapse  of  the  German  war-machine.  But,  what- 
ever the  results  of  our  efforts  in  this  direction,  as  re- 
vealed by  the  light  of  history,  the  American  people 
can  be  assured  that  never  was  a  campaign  of  propa- 
ganda waged  with  such  scrupulous  regard  for  the  truth. 
Though  certain  of  our  allies  sent  out  material  for  dis- 
tribution over  the  enemy  lines  which  took  considerable 


356      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

liberties  with  the  truth,  to  put  it  mildly,  and  though 
the  French  quite  frankly  made  use  of  Bolshevistic 
arguments,  appeals,  and  promises,  the  distribution  of 
our  own  propaganda  leaflets  was  delayed  time  after 
time  in  order  that  the  General  Staff  might  sift  and 
weigh  the  statements  which  it  contained  until  they 
contained  nothing  save  sincerity  and  truth. 

In  the  weeks  that  followed  Foch's  great  offensive 
in  the  summer  of  1918,  it  became  increasingly  appar- 
ent to  those  who  were  in  a  position  to  judge,  that  Ger- 
man morale,  both  in  the  heart  of  the  empire  as  well  as 
at  the  front,  was  imperceptibly  but  none  the  less 
steadily  deteriorating.  No  one  realized  the  significance 
of  this  to  the  Allied  cause  better  than  the  chief  of  the 
Psychologic  Subsection,  who  determined  to  watch  the 
progress  of  the  movement,  just  as  a  physician  watches 
the  progress  of  a  disease,  and  to  indicate  its  trend  by 
means  of  a  chart,  like  those  on  which  nurses  record  the 
variations  in  the  pulse  and  temperature  of  their  pa- 
tients. In  pursuance  of  this  plan,  which  was  put  mto 
execution  about  the  ist  of  September,  19 18,  a  daily 
report  was  prepared  which  contained  in  brief  form  aU 
news  in  any  way  relating  to  German  morale  which 
had  come  in  from  all  sources  during  the  preceding 
twenty-four  hours.  At  the  end  of  each  week  an  in- 
terpretation of  the  drift  of  these  news  items  was  at- 
tempted in  a  weekly  report.  Using  as  a  basis  for  its 
estimates  material  contained  in  these  reports,  supple- 
mented by  information  obtained  from  every  source 
open  to  Military  Intelligence,  the  subsection  worked 
out  its  famous  "Chart  of  German  Civilian  Morale,'* 


"M.  I."  357 

which,  during  the  closing  months  of  the  war,  occupied 
a  conspicuous  place  on  a  wall  of  Secretary  Baker's 
office.  The  chart  was  drawn  on  a  sheet  divided  into 
cross-sections,  each  of  which  represented  a  day,  while 
the  heavy  black  line,  writhing  across  the  paper  like  a 
dying  serpent,  showed  the  wavering  morale  of  Ger- 
many's civil  population.  Secondary  lines  depicted  in 
graphic  form  the  German  military  situation,  the  de- 
gree of  political  unity  in  Germany,  the  situation  in 
Austria-Hungary,  the  state  of  the  food  supply  in  the 
Central  Empires,  and  the  U-boat  sinkings.  But  it 
was,  of  course,  the  line  indicating  the  state  of  civilian 
morale  which  most  accurately  gauged  the  situation. 
Starting  in  August,  1914  (nearly  three  years  before  our 
entry  into  the  war),  at  the  top  of  the  chart,  the  line 
runs  almost  straight  until  the  battle  of  the  Marne, 
when  there  is  a  sudden  drop.  It  recovers,  however, 
with  the  continuance  of  the  German  advance,  declines 
during  the  winters  of  1914-1915  and  1915-1916,  only 
to  ascend  again  with  the  coming  of  spring;  falls  sharply 
after  the  final  reverse  at  Verdun,  drops  to  a  still  lower 
level  than  before  during  the  anxious  winter  of  191 7- 
19 18,  rises  almost  to  its  highest  peak  during  Hinden- 
burg's  tremendous  onset  in  the  following  spring;  begins 
a  gradual  decline  in  ratio  to  the  steady  increase  in  the 
strength  of  the  American  armies,  and  final!}'',  begin- 
ning with  the  defeat  of  the  all-conquering  Germans  at 
Chateau-Thierry,  goes  plunging  downward  until,  on 
November  11,  1918,  the  line  ends  at  the  bottom  of  the 
chart  in  the  abyss  of  national  despair. 

Shortly  after  the  Armistice,  when  the  morale  of 


35S      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Germany's  civil  population  was  no  longer  of  any  in- 
terest save  to  the  Germans  themselves,  the  symptoms 
of  a  new  and  even  more  alarming  disorder  became  ap- 
parent to  the  specialists  of  the  Psychologic  Subsection, 
whereupon,  in  order  to  keep  this  new  menace  to  the 
health  of  the  world  under  observation,  a  new  chart  was 
started  and  a  fresh  series  of  reports  were  begun,  the 
personnel  of  the  section  being  instructed  to  immediately 
note  all  movements  and  manifestations  likely  to  prove 
destructive  of  good  order  and  stable  government.  On 
huge  wall-maps  of  Europe  and  Asiatic  Russia  various 
kinds  of  disturbances  or  threatened  disturbances — 
revolutions,  mutinies,  riots,  racial  and  religious  troubles, 
strikes,  labor  and  political  demonstrations — were  in- 
dicated by  pins  of  different  colors: 

Red:       Bolshevism,  Syndicalist,  or  Socialist. 

Brown :  Political  revolution,  counter-revolution,  anti- 
Bolshevist  or  social  disturbances. 

Blue:      Industrial  strikes. 

Green :    Food  riots,  plundering,  or  difficult  food  situa- 
tion. 

White:    Racial  troubles. 

Black :    Military  mutiny. 

Yellow:  Disease  epidemic. 
Each  day  a  report  was  made  out,  compiled  from 
various  sources,  covering  the  subject  of  European  dis- 
turbances, these  reports  being  arranged  geographically. 
Every  Friday  a  weekly  summary  was  prepared  in  num- 
bered paragraphs,  condensing  the  daily  reports  and 
giving,  if  possible,  an  interpretation  of  the  trend  of  un- 
rest during  the  preceding  week.     As  the  most  threaten- 


"M.  I."  359 

ing  disturbances  during  the  winter  of  1918-1919  were 
of  a  Bolshevist  nature,  it  was  deemed  advisable  to 
issue  a  weekly  report  on  the  activities  of  Trotzky, 
Lenine  &  Co.  and  their  followers. 

The  Fifth  Section  of  the  Military  Intelligence  Divi- 
sion, known  as  M  I  5,  is  charged  with  the  duty  of  ob- 
taining positive  intelligence,  that  is,  of  locating  direct 
and  indirect  sources  of  information;  of  supervising 
military  attaches,  who,  within  the  limits  of  their  activi- 
ties, obtain  essential  information,  and  of  forwarding 
this  information  to  such  sections  of  the  Intelligence 
Division  as  may  find  it  of  value.  Now  I  am  perfectly 
aware  that  the  army  officers  who  are  attached  to  the 
American  embassies  and  legations  in  various  foreign 
countries  do  not  stand  particularly  high  in  the  estima- 
tion of  the  American  people.  They  are  generally  re- 
garded as  men  who  have  been  selected  for  their  wealth 
and  social  distinction  rather  than  for  their  abilities  as 
soldiers;  who  have  had  more  experience  in  ballrooms 
than  in  bombarded  cities,  and  are  more  successful  in 
leading  cotillions  than  at  leading  troops  in  battle. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  estimate  of  our  military  at- 
taches is  bitterly  unjust.  As  showing  the  t^pe  of 
men  who  represented  the  army  abroad,  I  might  men- 
tion that  our  military  attache  in  England  during  the 
early  years  of  the  Great  War  was  Major-General  George 
S.  Squier  (then  a  colonel),  chief  signal  officer  of  the 
army  and  one  of  the  foremost  scientists  in  America, 
if  not,  indeed,  in  the  world;  our  attache  at  Paris  was 
Colonel  Spencer  S.  Crosby,  one  of  the  most  able  engineer 
officers  in  the  army;  while  at  Berlin  our  military  rep- 


36o      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

resentative  was  Major-General  (then  Colonel)  Joseph 
A.  Kuhn,  who,  after  organizing,  training,  and  com- 
manding in  action  the  79th  Division,  eventually  rose 
to  the  command  of  an  army  corps. 

Everything  considered,  the  American  military 
attaches  have  done  more  valuable  work  and  received 
less  recognition  for  it  than  almost  any  class  of  officers 
that  I  know.  They  have  been  placed  in  the  unenviable 
position  of  taking  orders  from  two  departments — War 
and  State;  they  have  been  forced,  by  the  very  nature 
of  their  duties,  to  play  the  role  of  onlookers  while  their 
fellow  officers  were  fighting,  and  they  have  repeatedly 
been  accused  of  being  spies.  Though  the  duties  of  our 
attaches  in  the  capitals  of  our  allies  have  been  largely 
ornamental  during  the  war,  owing  to  the  fact  that  they 
were  virtually  superseded  in  their  military  functions 
by  the  various  American  military  missions,  their  work 
in  the  neutral  countries  of  Holland,  Denmark,  Norw^ay, 
Sweden,  Spain,  and  Switzerland  was  of  enormous  im- 
portance, for  they  provided  MiHtary  Intelligence  with 
its  most  reliable  and  important  source  of  information. 
Those  officers  stationed  at  The  Hague,  Copenhagen, 
and  Berne  could  look  across  the  barbed  wire,  figura- 
tively speaking,  and  see  for  themselves  what  the  enemy 
was  doing.  Through  all  sorts  of  agents — spies,  smug- 
glers, deserters,  refugees,  business  men  whose  affairs 
took  them  into  the  territory  of  the  Central  Powers, 
and  returning  travellers — they  were  able  to  keep  their 
fingers  constantly  on  the  military  and  economic  pulse 
of  the  enemy,  and  to  report  the  information  thus  ob- 
tained to  the  A.  E.  F.  and  to  Washington.     It  goes 


"M.  I."  361 

without  sa>'ing  that  this  work  called  for  the  exercise 
of  the  highest  degree  of  patience,  resourcefulness,  and 
tact,  for  they  were  always  surrounded  b}-  German 
agents,  and  particularly  in  those  countries  where  Ger- 
man sympathizers  predominated,  the  slightest  indis- 
cretion would  have  resulted  in  a  demand  for  their  re- 
call. No  news  that  came  out  of  Germany  was  too 
trivial  to  escape  their  attention.  Every  one  who 
crossed  the  frontier,  from  Dutch  and  Danish  bankers 
to  German  deserters,  was  adroitly  questioned  and  cross- 
questioned  by  the  attaches,  certain  of  the  information 
thus  obtained  exercising  a  profound  effect  on  .America's 
military  policy.  For  example,  our  attache  at  The 
Hague  was  dining  one  evening  with  a  Dutch  banker 
who  had  just  returned  from  a  business  trip  to  Germany. 
WTiile  chatting  over  the  coffee  and  cigars  the  Hollander 
remarked  that,  though  he  had  been  the  guest  of  a 
German  nobleman  of  great  wealth,  he  had  not  been 
quite  as  comfortable  as  on  previous  visits,  owing  to 
the  absence  of  his  host's  butler. 

"What  has  become  of  old  Franz?"  the  Hollander 
had  asked  his  host.  "The  place  isn't  the  same  with- 
out him." 

"He  was  callea  to  the  colors  last  week,"  was  the 
answer. 

"But  surely  he  is  too  old  for  active  service,"  the 
banker  protested.  "  He  must  be  nearer  sixty  than  fifty; 
he  is  blind  in  one  eye  and  he  is  crippled  with  rheuma- 
tism." 

"Ach,  yes,"  admitted  the  German.  "But  what 
would  you?    The  Fatherland  has  need  of  every  man." 


362      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

This  incident,  related  quite  casually  over  a  dinner- 
table,  though  trivial  in  itself,  gave  our  military  attache 
—  and  through  hini  our  Military  Intelligence  —  an 
intimation  of  the  enormous  depletion  of  Germany's 
man-power.  Taken  in  conjunction  with  similar  re- 
ports from  other  sources,  it  convinced  him  that  Ger- 
many was  fast  becoming  desperately  hard  up  for  men. 

The  attache  in  Switzerland,  perusing,  as  was  his 
custom,  the  current  issues  of  the  German  newspapers, 
had  his  attention  attracted  by  an  advertisement,  in- 
serted by  a  citizen  of  a  south  German  city,  offering  to 
rent  a  pair  of  stout  leather  boots,  in  good  condition, 
for  six  weeks  for  forty  marks.  When  the  equivalent 
of  ten  dollars  is  demanded  for  the  use  of  a  pair  of  boots 
for  six  weeks,  there  is  only  one  conclusion  to  be  drawn. 
"  Germany  must  be  at  the  last  gasp  for  leather,"  argued 
the  attache,  and  he  so  informed  Washington.  His 
surmise  proved  perfectly  correct. 

Our  military  representative  at  The  Hague  was 
materially  aided  in  his  quest  for  information  by  a 
former  sergeant  in  the  American  Army,  who,  upon  his 
discharge,  had  bought  a  small  truck-farm  in  southern 
Holland,  within  a  few  rods  of  the  frontier.  His  dwell- 
ing was  a  recognized  rendezvous  for  smugglers  and 
deserters,  the  old  soldier  sending  reports  of  the  im- 
mensely important  information  which  he  obtained 
from  them  to  the  attache  at  the  capital  as  regularly  as, 
when  stationed  at  an  army  post  in  the  Indian  country, 
he  turned  in  his  company  reports. 

All  cable  messages  sent  by  the  mihtary  attaches 
to  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  habitually  ended 


"M.  I."  363 

with  the  sentence  "Pershing  informed,"  which  signi- 
fied that  the  information  had  also  been  communicated 
to  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  American  Expedi- 
tionary Forces.  Shortly  after  the  arrival  of  the  former 
Kaiser  at  Amerongen,  the  newspapers  carried  circum- 
stantial accounts  of  serious  political  unrest  in  Holland. 
In  order  to  correct  the  impression  thus  created,  the 
attache  at  The  Hague,  who  was  evidently  blessed  wdth 
a  sense  of  humor,  sent  the  following  message  to  Wash- 
ington: 

'^  Everything  quiet  in  Holland.     The  Kaiser  is  still 
with  us.     Pershing  informed.     God  also.'' 

Outside  of  Tifiis,  in  the  Caucasus,  in  whose  bazaars 
eighty  languages  are  commonly  spoken,  I  suppose  that 
the  Sixth  Section  of  Military  Intelligence,  familiarly 
referred  to  as  M  I  6,  is  the  nearest  modern  equivalent 
to  the  Tower  of  Babel.  This  section  is  charged  wath 
translating  into  English  books,  periodicals,  newspapers, 
pamphlets,  posters,  proclamations,  army  orders,  war 
diaries,  confidential  reports.  Heaven  only  knows  what 
besides,  which  appear  in  pretty  much  every  language 
under  the  sun.  The  translators  at  present  employed 
in  the  section  make  translations  from  the  French, 
Italian,  Spanish,  Portuguese,  German,  Dutch,  Dano- 
Norwegian,  Russian,  Swedish,  Greek,  and  Icelandic. 
This  comprises  only  a  portion  of  the  section's  work, 
however,  for  it  also  makes  translations  from  Rou- 
manian, Ukrainian,  Czecho-Slovak,  Serbo-Croatian, 
Slovenian,   Albanian,   Bulgarian,   Polish,   Lithuanian, 


364      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Lettish,  Finnish,  Ladino  (there's  a  strange  one!),  He- 
brew, Yiddish,  Turkish,  Armenian,  Assyrian,  Syriac, 
Arabic,  Hindustani,  Bengali,  Chinese,  Japanese,  Choc- 
taw, and  other  North  American  Indian  dialects, 
Samoan,  a  dialect  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  and  Es- 
peranto. By  an  ingenious  system  of  filing  and  index- 
ing the  information  thus  obtained,  the  section  has 
become  a  sort  of  clearing-house  for  data  gleaned  from 
the  foreign  press. 

M  I  8  is  the  Cable  and  Telegraph  Section  of  Mili- 
tary Intelligence.  A  portion  of  its  work  consists  in 
sending  and  receiving  telegrams  and  cables  between  the 
division  and  its  intelligence  officers  on  duty  outside  of 
Washington,  including  the  military  attaches  in  foreign 
countries.  By  means  of  special  wire  connections,  re- 
markably fast  service  has  been  provided,  particularly 
with  the  most  important  centre,  Paris,  whence  messages 
in  plain  text  have  been  delivered  in  Washington  four 
hours  earlier  by  the  clock  than  they  were  despatched, 
while  code  messages  have  been  delivered  at  approxi- 
mately the  same  time  by  the  clock  that  they  were  sent. 
As  an  illustration  of  the  peculiar  tricks  played  by  the 
change  in  time,  I  might  mention — though  it  has  nothing 
on  earth  to  do  with  the  subject  of  Military  Intelligence 
— that  the  news  of  the  death  of  Queen  Victoria  was  re- 
ceived in  New  York  three  and  a  half  hours  before  the 
time  at  which  she  breathed  her  last ! 

By  far  the  greater  portion  of  the  enormous  amount 
of  cable  correspondence  handled  by  this  office  has  been 
in  the  form  of  code  messages.  Since  the  necessity  for 
security  has  required  that  the  code  words  of  each  mes- 


"M.  I."  365 

sage  be  enciphered  to  prevent  the  possibility  of  the 
message  being  intercepted  and  read  by  the  enem}-,  it 
has  been  necessary  to  subject  each  code  message  to 
two  complete  translations.  It  has  also  been  the  duty 
of  this  section,  in  order  to  insure  secrecy  and  to  secure 
economy  in  the  transmission  of  messages,  to  prepare 
five  code-books  for  publication.  Few  persons  realize, 
I  imagine,  that  the  use  of  code  by  the  Military  Intelli- 
gence Division,  the  Adjutant-General's  Office,  and 
other  branches  of  the  War  Department,  as  well  as  by 
the  x\merican  Expeditionary  Forces,  has  resulted  in  a 
saving  to  the  government  of  at  least  50  per  cent  in  the 
cost  of  telegraphic  and  cable  communications.  The 
use  of  the  Geographical  Code  has  brought  about  an 
even  greater  economy  by  eliminating  the  necessity  of 
spelling  out  foreign  place  names.  Though  hundreds 
of  plays,  novels,  and  magazine  stories  have  been  based 
on  the  work  of  code  and  cipher  experts  in  this  and 
other  countries,  the  writers  have  usually  painted  in 
too  vivid  colors  the  romantic  side  of  the  calling. 
Though  code  and  cipher  work  is  frequently  productive 
of  exciting  and  dramatic  moments,  it  is  usually  the  in- 
tellectual excitement  of  a  chemist  who,  after  weeks  of 
laborious  experiments,  discovers  a  new  reaction,  rather 
than  the  physical  thrill  which  a  detective  experiences 
when  he  discovers  a  clew  to  a  crime. 

Because  of  the  enormous  number  of  foreign-bom 
citizens  who  were  brought  into  the  army  by  the  draft, 
or  who  entered  it  through  the  National  Guard  or  as 
volunteers,  the  work  of  counter-espionage  within  the 


366      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

militar}'  establishment  itself  was  of  vital  importance, 
for  a  single  traitor  in  the  expeditionary  forces  might 
well  have  turned  victory  into  disaster.  Had  it  not 
been  for  the  vigilance  and  efficiency  of  the  Third  Sec- 
tion of  Military  Intelligence,  which  was  charged  with 
counter-espionage  mthin  the  military  establishment 
itself,  our  hastily  recruited  and  somewhat  loosely  or- 
ganized armies  would  have  afforded  countless  oppor- 
tunities for  the  operations  of  enemy  agents.  I  can 
give  no  higher  praise  to  the  work  of  this  section  than 
to  say  that,  though  numerous  enemy  agents  succeeded 
in  gaining  admission  to  the  military  service  in  the 
United  States,  they  did  not  succeed  in  getting  over- 
seas, where  they  might  have  done  irreparable  harm. 
So  active  were  our  intelligence  officers,  so  carefully  did 
they  investigate  the  record  of  every  man  destined  for 
service  in  France,  that,  of  the  two  and  a  half  million 
men  in  the  A.  E.  F.,  not  a  single  one,  so  far  as.  I  am 
aware,  was  convicted  of  espionage. 

Every  military  organization  operating  indepen- 
dently, from  a  division  down  to  a  quartermaster  depot, 
possessed  its  own  counter-espionage  organization,  built 
up  within  itself  for  its  own  protection  but  operating 
according  to  a  general  plan  and  reporting  directly  to 
the  Military  Intelligence  Division  in  Washington. 
During  the  war  there  were  over  400  intelligence  offi- 
cers reporting  to  Military  Intelligence,  either  directly 
or  through  department  intelligence  officers.  In  addi- 
tion to  these,  there  were  special  intelligence  officers  at 
certain  highly  important  points:  New  York,  Hoboken, 
Philadelphia,  Pittsburg,  St.  Louis,  New  Orleans,  Seat- 


"M.  I."  367 

tie,  and  San  Juan,  Porto  Rico — and  twenty-one  district 
intelligence  officers  stationed  in  centres  of  somewhat 
less  importance.  The  privilege  of  direct  communication, 
granted  by  the  Secretary  of  War,  enabled  the  counter- 
espionage organization  throughout  the  United  States 
to  be  controlled  and  co-ordinated  without  interference 
by  the  normal  military  command,  thereby  insuring 
additional  secrecy  for  its  operations  and  eliminating 
the  enormous  amount  of  time  and  red  tape  involved 
in  sending  communications  through  the  usual  military 
channels.  Each  intelligence  officer  corresponded  di- 
rectly and  freely  with  every  other  intelligence  officer, 
copies  of  such  lateral  communications  being  sent  to 
Military  Intelligence,  the  files  of  M.  I.  thus  becoming 
a  great  central  reservoir  for  intelligence  information  of 
every  sort.  As  a  result  of  this  organization,  the  Di- 
rector of  MiHtary  Intelligence,  sitting  at  his  desk  in 
Washington,  was  the  centre  of  a  vast  network  of  intelli- 
gence officers  and  other  agents  which  covered  not  only 
the  whole  of  the  United  States  but,  indeed,  the 
greater  part  of  the  world. 

The  ever-present  problem  presented  by  counter- 
espionage work  within  the  army  was  the  determination 
of  the  loyalty  of  officers  and  men.  Experience  proved 
that  the  pro-German  was  almost  certain  to  reveal 
himself  sooner  or  later,  or  to  be  reported  by  some  one 
who  had  known  him,  the  loyal  rank  and  file  themselves 
constituting  the  most  effective  counter-espionage  ser- 
vice of  all.  Investigations  of  men  thus  reported  fre- 
quently showed,  however,  that,  though  the  suspect 
might  have  been  pro-German  before  our  entrance  into 


368      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

the  war,  he  had  been  apparently  loyal  since.  If  he 
was  an  enHsted  man  it  was  usually  deemed  safe  to  put 
him  with  line  troops  and  send  him  to  the  front,  for,  even 
were  he  to  prove  disloyal,  his  opportunities  for  acquiring 
important  information  were  comparatively  few,  and  his 
opportunities  for  transmitting  such  information  to  the 
enemy  almost  infinitesimal.  In  the  case  of  an  officer, 
however,  the  question  took  on  a  far  graver  aspect, 
and  only  after  the  most  searching  investigation  was 
such  a  man  permitted  to  go  overseas. 

The  activities  of  the  men  under  investigation  as- 
sumed many  forms.  First  in  importance,  of  course, 
though  not  in  numbers,  were  those  enemy  agents  who 
had  entered  the  army  for  the  express  purpose  of  ac- 
quiring information  for  transmission  to  the  enemy. 
These  were,  in  plain  language,  spies,  and  had  they  been 
caught  "with  the  goods,"  they  would  have  been  sub- 
ject to  court  martial  and  execution.  In  order  to  silence 
the  countless  stories  and  rumors  which  have  been  cir- 
culated, I  will  avail  myself  of  this  opportunity  to  state 
that  not  a  single  American  soldier  or  civilian  was  exe- 
cuted for  espionage  during  the  entire  course  of  the  war. 
The  bulk  of  the  cases  which  were  investigated  concerned 
men  who,  because  of  their  foreign  birth,  or  antecedents, 
or  sympathies,  might  have  been  willing  to  impart  in- 
formation of  military  value  to  enemy  agents.  The 
most  difficult  class  to  deal  with,  however,  was  the  man 
who  was  spreading  stories,  with  or  without  thought  as 
to  their  effect,  which  would  tend  to  lower  the  morale  of 
the  army.  The  reports  upon  which  investigations  were 
initiated  varied  greatly  in  definiteness,  ranging  aU  the 


"M.  I."  369 

way  from  specific  statements  as  to  a  man's  utterances 
or  acts  to  a  vague  rumor  that  in  such  and  such  a  place 
there  was  a  man,  name  not  given,  who  should  be  inves- 
tigated. It  was  the  poHcy  of  the  section,  however,  to 
pursue  any  clew,  no  matter  how  vague,  until  the  guilt 
or  innocence  of  the  suspect  was  definitely  established. 
Where  the  original  information  was  anonymous,  that 
point  was  always  sharply  emphasized,  so  that  the  sus- 
pect's reputation  might  not  be  injured  should  the  alle- 
gations prove  to  be  unfounded,  for  it  was  found  that 
anonymous  charges  were  very  frequently  made  from 
motives  of  spite  or  revenge  or  because  of  some  real  or 
fancied  injur}^  In  such  cases  it  was  the  policy  of  the 
section  to  push  the  investigation  only  far  enough  to 
show  their  character  and  then  drop  them  promptly, 
without  burdening  the  field  intelligence  officers  or  other 
investigating  agencies  with  useless  work. 

The  converse  of  this  policy  was  followed  in  cases 
where  the  charges  appeared  to  be  well  grounded,  the 
man  then  being  kept  under  surveillance  until  some- 
thing, no  matter  what,  was  picked  up  which  would 
place  him  where  he  could  do  no  harm. 

One  of  the  commonest  problems  was  the  one  pre- 
sented by  the  officer  of  German  extraction  who  had 
been  born  and  bred  amid  Teutonic  influences,  and  who 
was  naturally  pro- German  in  sympathy  and  utterances 
before  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  but  who  had 
been  guilty  of  no  act  or  utterance  since  that  date  which 
could  be  construed  as  in  any  degree  disloyal,  and  who, 
from  a  militar}'  point  of  view,  was  extremely  efficient. 
Such  cases,  in  the  last  analysis,  always  resolved  them- 


370      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

selves  into  the  question:  "Is  he  fit  to  go  across?" 
Each  case  was,  of  course,  considered  on  its  own  merits. 
While  it  was  obviously  impossible  to  lay  down  a  rule- 
of-thumb  applicable  to  all,  two  considerations  in  the 
main  governed  the  decision.  In  the  first  place,  an 
effort  was  made  to  obtain  the  opinions  of  the  officers 
serving  with  the  man  in  question  and  to  learn  whether 
they  would  be  satisfied  to  go  into  action  against  Ger- 
man troops  with  him.  If  his  fellow  officers  felt  that 
they  could  trust  him  under  such  circumstances,  it  was 
a  fair  judgment  in  his  favor.  The  second  considera- 
tion was  to  ascertain  whether  his  name,  lineage,  or 
appearance  would  make  him  unacceptable  to  our 
French  allies.  If  such  were  likely  to  be  the  case,  in- 
ternational courtesy,  if  nothing  else,  made  it  inadvisa- 
ble to  send  him  overseas.  Surveillance  of  these  men 
naturally  was  continued  in  France,  but  the  Intelligence 
Division  of  the  A.  E.  F.,  in  reporting  that  such  a  case 
could  be  considered  closed,  frequently  said  in  effect 
that  any  taint  of  disloyalty  which  might  once  have 
existed  had  been  burned  away  by  the  fire  of  battle. 

The  process  of  having  an  officer  discharged  from 
the  army  by  authority  of  Paragraph  9,  War  Depart- 
ment Bulletin  No.  32  ("The  President  is  hereby  au- 
thorized to  discharge  any  officer  from  the  office  held 
by  him  under  such  appointment  for  any  cause  which, 
in  the  judgment  of  the  President,  would  promote  the 
public  service"),  was  the  easiest  and  most  satisfactory 
manner  of  dealing  with  cases  of  individuals  against 
whom  it  was  impossible  to  obtain  sufficient  evidence 
for  conviction  by  court  martial  but  whose  presence 


"M.  I."  371 

in  the  army  was  regarded  as  constituting  a  menace 
to  the  national  safety.  This  will  explain  in  some 
measure,  perhaps,  the  curt  announcements  which  ap- 
peared from  time  to  time  during  the  course  of  the  war 
in  Army  Orders:  "Lieutenant  (or  Captain,  or  Colonel) 
So-and-So  has  been  discharged  for  the  good  of  the 
Service."  The  great  drawback,  however,  to  this 
method  of  ridding  the  army  of  undesirables  was  that 
it  could  not  be  applied  to  officers  of  the  regular  estab- 
lishment, as  the  terms  of  the  Act  restricted  its  applica- 
tion to  Reserve  officers  and  those  holding  commissions 
for  the  term  of  the  emergency.  The  policy  pursued 
by  Military  Intelligence  in  the  cases  of  regular  officers 
suspected  of  disloyalty — for  all  suspected  officers  were 
not  confined  to  the  National  Army  or  the  Reserve 
Corps — was  to  have  them  assigned  to  posts  where 
their  opportunities  for  mischief  would  be  reduced  to  a 
minimum.  An  officer  ordered  to  duty  in  the  heart  of 
Alaska,  say,  was  considered  about  as  safe,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  Military  Intelligence,  as  though  he 
were  in  a  cell  at  Leavenworth. 

Among  the  nearly  700,000  men  swept  by  the  first 
draft  into  the  cantonments  to  be  fused  into  a  national 
army  were  thousands  upon  thousands  of  men  of  alien 
birth,  many  of  them  but  recently  arrived  in  this  coun- 
try and  all  but  ignorant  of  its  tongue.  It  speedily 
became  apparent  that  the  fusing  process  was  failing 
to  produce  in  many  of  these  men,  perhaps  in  the  major- 
ity of  them,  the  change  necessary  to  make  them  into 
soldiers.  Instead  of  melting  and  flowing  like  the  rest 
of  the  metal  from  which  was  forged  the  weapon  which 


372      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

halted  the  Huns  at  Chateau-Thierry  and  beat  them 
back  in  the  Argonne,  these  men  of  alien  birth  remained 
a  hard,  unyielding  mass,  not  only  obdurate  in  itself, 
but  threatening  to  leave  in  the  finished  weapon  flaws 
that  would  be  fatal  when  it  was  subjected  to  the  test 
of  battle.  By  the  fall  of  191 7,  therefore,  the  military 
authorities  had  awakened  to  a  realization  of  the  fact 
that  they  were  confronted  by  a  serious  and  difficult 
problem — ^what  to  do  with  the  foreign-speaking  ele- 
ment of  our  new  armies. 

These  immigrants,  particularly  the  more  recent, 
tend  to  congregate  in  the  industrial  centres  of  the 
countr}^,  in  New  York's  teeming  "East  Side,"  in  the 
mining  regions  of  Pennsylvania,  in  the  manufacturing 
cities  of  New  England,  and  in  the  Pacific  Northwest. 
Here  they  live  in  swarming  communities,  speaking 
their  own  languages,  reading  (if  they  can)  their  own 
newspapers,  attending  their  own  churches,  their  wants 
ministered  to  by  their  own  doctors,  lawyers,  bankers, 
and  tradesmen.  From  such  colonies  the  drag-net  of 
the  draft  drew  into  the  army  tens  of  thousands  of 
foreign-speaking  men.  Here,  then,  was  the  first  and 
greatest  source  of  difficulty  in  transforming  these  aliens 
from  many  lands  into  American  soldiers — ignorance  of 
the  English  language.  Unable  to  understand  the  or- 
ders which  were  given  them,  they  were  set  down  as 
stupid  and  surly,  and  through  a  lack  of  judgment  in 
the  selection  of  the  commissioned  and  non-commis- 
sioned officers  put  in  charge  of  them,  they  were  fre- 
quently the  victims  of  misunderstanding  and  ill- 
treatment.    Four  illustrations  are  typical  of  a  hundred 


"M.  I."  373 

or  more  similar  incidents  in  the  Depot  Brigade  at 
Camp  Gordon: 

Private  Sobolowski,  failing  to  spell  his  name,  was 
struck  in  the  jaw  by  his  sergeant,  so  successfully 
that  ihe  jaw  was  broken  and  a  few  teeth  were 
knocked  out.  The  private  went  to  the  hospital 
and  the  sergeant  to  the  guard-house,  pending 
court-martial  proceedings. 

Private  Pagarzelski  repHed  to  his  corporal  in 
Polish,  which  the  corporal  considered  highly 
abusive.  The  private  was  court-martialled  and 
sixty  dollars  of  his  pay  was  forfeited.  As  a 
consequence  the  man  was  not  only  unable  to 
help  his  aged  mother  but  was  left  without  a 
penny  for  himself. 

Private  Sznyder,  being  on  guard  duty,  misunder- 
stood the  orders  repeated  to  him  by  the  corporal 
of  the  guard,  and  naturally  did  not  comply  with 
them.  As  a  result  he  was  arrested  and  put  in 
the  guard-house,  fifty-seven  dollars  being  taken 
from  him  by  a  corporal,  of  which  only  thirty- 
five  dollars  was  returned.  The  corporal  took 
advantage  of  his  ignorance  of  English  to  ap- 
propriate a  part  of  the  money. 

A  Russian  was  arrested  for  evasion  of  military 
service.  After  he  had  spent  six  weeks  in  the 
guard-house  it  was  discovered  (through  an  in- 
terpreter) that  the  man  was  arrested  before  he 
had  received  notification  of  being  drafted. 

From  a  counter-espionage  point  of  view  such  con- 
ditions were  distinctly  dangerous.     The  foreign-speak- 


374      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

ing  soldiers,  if  not  actually  affiliated  with  the  enemy, 
were,  because  of  their  ignorance  and  credulity,  es- 
pecially susceptible  to  the  advances  of  enemy  agents 
and  propagandists.  When  herded  together  in  a  depot 
brigade,  made  surly  by  the  inconsiderate  treatment 
they  received  and  chafing  under  the  compulsion  of 
being  set  at  manual  labor  in  this  country  when  their 
ambition  was  to  go  overseas,  they  were  potentially,  if 
not  actually,  ripe  for  mischief. 

Early  in  1918  Mr.  D.  Chauncey  Brewer,  of  Boston, 
president  of  the  North  American  Civic  League  for 
Immigrants,  was  appointed  by  the  Secretary  of  War 
to  take  the  situation  in  hand.  Under  his  direction  a 
corps  of  field  agents  commenced  operations  both  in  the 
camps  and  cantonments  and  in  the  large  cities  and 
industrial  centres,  collecting  information  about  the 
non-English-speaking  men  taken  by  the  draft.  These 
agents,  who  were  carefully  picked  men  of  foreign  extrac- 
tion and  generally  hnguists  of  ability,  observed  the 
general  and  special  influences  affecting  the  foreign-born 
groups  and  investigated  propaganda,  suspects,  com- 
plaints regarding  draft  evasion,  draft  boards,  soldiers' 
allotments,  insurance,  and  the  like.  They  reported  on 
conditions  existing  in  the  camps  from  information  con- 
tained in  soldiers'  letters,  for  many  men  who  were  pre- 
vented by  their  lack  of  knowledge  of  English  or  other 
reasons  from  complaining  to  their  military  superiors, 
would  recite  their  troubles  in  their  letters  to  the  folks 
at  home.  These  agents  accounted  in  various  ways  for 
their  presence  in  the  camps,  most  of  them  announcing 
that  they  were  working  for  the  Associated  Charities  or 


"M.  I."  375 

for  the  North  American  Civic  League  for  Immigrants. 
They  established  connections  with  leaders  of  the  foreign 
colonies  in  the  larger  cities  as  well  as  with  the  poor. 
The  foreign-language  press,  its  editors  and  its  influence, 
good  or  bad,  also  demanded  their  attention.  They 
reported  loyal  citizens  of  integrity  and  ability  who 
were  later  induced  by  means  of  correspondence  to  vol- 
unteer for  this  kind  of  service  and  who  could  keep 
ISIilitary  Intelligence  informed  on  conditions  in  their 
respective  cities  when  the  agent  had  finished  his  work 
or  found  it  ad\asable  to  withdraw.  Thus  was  built  up 
a  large  volunteer  organization  composed  of  loyal  citi- 
zens of  foreign  birth  or  extraction,  who  kept  the  Intelli- 
gence Division  advised  of  conditions  among  their  re- 
spective groups  or  races,  and  to  whom  the  division 
could  apply  for  assistance  or  information  in  individual 
cases  or  localities.  These  volunteer  assistants  included 
men  in  all  lines  of  business  and  in  all  professions.  The 
Boards  of  Health  of  cities  having  large  foreign-speaking 
populations  vouched  for  loyal  foreign-speaking  doctors 
who,  because  of  the  peculiarly  confidential  relations 
they  enjoyed  with  their  patients,  were  able  to  obtain 
information  of  great  value  to  the  section.  The  same 
was  true  of  clergymen  of  many  denominations.  The 
editors  of  foreign-language  newspapers  frequently  ren- 
dered highly  effective  co-operation,  and  correspondence 
was  started  with  a  dozen  or  more  school  superinten- 
dents in  the  larger  cities  with  a  view  to  enlisting  the 
aid  of  the  high-school  boys  in  promoting  the  morale  of 
the  foreign-speaking  colonies. 

Reports  received  from  Camp  Gordon  in  April, 


376      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

1 918,  indicated  serious  trouble  with  the  unnaturalized 
Russians  and  Poles,  and,  in  some  instances,  with  the 
Italians,  all  of  whom  were  perfectly  willing  to  fight  for 
the  lands  from  which  they  came  but  not  for  this  one. 
Camp  Gordon  was  a  replacement  camp,  and  as  such 
had  become  a  dmnping-ground  for  divisions  having 
men  that  they  wished  to  get  rid  of,  a  large  proportion 
of  whom  were  foreigners.  Of  the  1,500  men  of  all 
nationalities  who  were  transferred  to  this  camp  by  the 
8 2d  Division  on  the  ground  of  suspected  disloyalty, 
nearly  1,000  did  not  speak  English.  In  order  to  rem- 
edy this  dangerous  condition,  a  memorandum  was 
drawn  up  by  M  I  3  and  was  adopted  by  the  War 
Department.  This  memorandum  recommended  that 
foreign-speaking  draftees  not  having  sufficient  knowl- 
edge of  English  to  understand  the  commands  be  segre- 
gated by  nationalities  in  companies,  both  the  commis- 
sioned and  non-commissioned  officers  of  which  should 
be  of  the  same  nationality  as  their  men,  or  should  at 
least  be  familiar  with  their  language,  habits,  and  psy- 
chology. In  support  of  the  plan  the  words  of  Napo- 
leon were  quoted: 

"If  I  had  enough  humpbacks  in  the  Army  to 
make  a  regiment,  enough  Negroes  to  make  a  battalion, 
enough  dumb  men  to  make  a  company,  I  would  so 
organize  them.  No  stimulus  is  more  potent  than  the 
pride  of  men  who  have  a  common  bond  either  of  race, 
nationality,  color,  or  even  affliction.  Men  thus  put 
together  want  to  show  the  rest  of  the  Army  their  ex- 
treme capability." 

The  work  at  Camp  Gordon  was  put  in  charge  of  an 


"M.  I."  377 

officer  of  Military  Intelligence,  who  had  had  consider- 
able experience  in  social-service  work  among  the  foreign- 
speaking  soldiers  at  Camps  Grant  and  Custer.  Upon 
his  arrival  at  Camp  Gordon  he  found  that  those  soldiers 
(most  of  them  foreigners)  who  had  been  left  behind 
when  troops  were  sent  overseas  had  been  placed  in  the 
5th  and  loth  Training  Battalions  of  the  Depot  Brigade. 
Forty-one  nationalities  were  represented  in  this  group 
of  foreigners,  classified  as  Allied  Aliens,  Neutral  Aliens, 
and  Enemy  Aliens,  80  per  cent  of  them  being  ItaHans, 
Slavs,  and  Russian  Jews.  The  officer  immediately  in- 
itiated a  study  of  each  nationality  and  of  each  indi- 
vidual, the  process  of  personally  interviewing  each 
man,  976  in  all,  occupying  two  weeks.  Thousands  of 
questions  and  complaints  were  answered  and  explana- 
tions made  to  the  men  in  their  native  tongue,  every 
man  being  recorded  and  classified  according  to  his 
nationahty,  loyalty,  intellect,  citizenship,  and  military 
fitness.  This  done,  two  companies  were  formed,  one 
composed  of  Slavs — the  majority  of  them  Poles — and 
the  other  of  Italians.  Three  officers  of  Polish  extrac- 
tion and  one  of  Russian  were  procured  for  the  Slav 
company  and  two  of  Italian  extraction  for  the  Italian 
company.  The  first  week  of  training  and  lectures  on 
discipline  resulted  in  an  amazing  impetus  of  spirit  and 
enthusiasm.  Between  the  Slavs  and  the  Italians  arose 
the  keenest  competition  for  proficiency  in  drill.  So 
startling  was  the  change  that  the  battalion  commander 
and  the  American  officers  in  charge  of  the  two  compa- 
nies passed  rapidly  from  discouragement  and  pessimism 
to  extreme  enthusiasm.     An  elaborate  plan  was  worked 


378      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

out  for  giving  the  men  a  working  knowledge  of  English 
and  a  series  of  lectures  were  given  in  their  own  tongues, 
thus  acquainting  them  with  the  requirements  necessary 
for  service  overseas.  Special  religious  services  were 
arranged  for  the  Italians  and  the  Slavs,  their  spiritual 
needs  being  ministered  to  by  priests  of  their  own  faiths. 
The  camp  diet  was  modified  in  order  to  give  them  food 
which  was  racially  acceptable.  Social  entertainments 
were  planned,  so  that  prominent  citizens  of  Atlanta 
could  meet  the  foreign-speaking  soldiers  and  make 
them  feel  that  they  were  as  dear  to  the  country  whose 
uniform  they  were  wearing  as  though  they  were  Ameri- 
can-bom. The  immediate  result  of  this  interesting 
experiment  was  the  conversion  of  potentially  dangerous 
malcontents  into  loyal,  enthusiastic,  and  efficient  sol- 
diers. Furthermore,  the  reaction  upon  the  families  of 
the  soldiers  and  upon  the  colonies  from  which  they 
came  was  highly  gratifying,  for  their  letters  from  the 
men,  filled  with  their  suddenly  awakened  enthusiasm 
for  army  life  and  with  glowing  accounts  of  the  kind- 
ness and  consideration  which  were  being  shown  them, 
did  much  to  counteract  any  latent  disloyalty  among 
the  foreign-speaking  population.  To  each  new  group 
of  foreigners  who  entered  the  battalion  the  question 
was  put:  "How  many  of  you  men  are  willing  to  go 
abroad  and  fight?"  In  most  cases  the  affirmative  re- 
sponses were  pitifully  few.  In  fact,  the  Slavs  practi- 
cally all  refused  to  put  on  identification  tags,  asserting 
that  should  they  be  sent  abroad  they  would  be  as  will- 
ing to  help  the  Germans  as  the  Allies.  But  when, 
after  a  few  weeks'  stay  in  the  battalion,  the  question, 


"M.  I."  379 

"How  many  of  you  men  are  willing  to  go  abroad  and 
fight?"  was  again  put  to  them,  the  response  was  as 
remarkable  as  it  was  thrilling,  for  practically  the 
whole  battalion  stepped  forward  as  one  man.  Prop- 
erly treated,  the  metal  had  fused  at  last.  They  were 
all  Americans  now. 

So  successful  did  the  experiment  prove  at  Camp 
Gordon  that  a  few  months  later  the  same  officer  was 
ordered  to  introduce  his  plan  at  Camp  Devens,  where 
there  were  approximately  6,000  men  who  did  not 
have  sufficient  knowledge  of  English  to  be  effectively 
trained.  In  three  days  he,  with  proper  assistance, 
personally  examined  upward  of  2,000  men,  and  on 
the  fourth  day  divided  them  into  four  companies. 
Company  No.  i  consisting  of  250  Slavs  (three-fourths 
of  them  Poles),  Company  No.  2  of  230  Italians,  Com- 
pany No.  3  of  200  Greeks  and  Albanians,  and  Company 
No.  4  of  the  same  number  of  Armenians  and  Syrians. 
A  number  of  non-commissioned  officers  who  could 
speak  the  necessary  languages  were  transferred  from, 
the  depot  brigade  and  assigned  to  assist  in  the  training 
of  the  new  companies.  The  results  obtained  were  be- 
yond all  expectations.  The  spirit  and  enthusiasm  of 
the  men  advanced  by  leaps  and  bounds.  They  entered 
into  competitive  drills  as  enthusiastically  as  though 
they  were  schoolboys  playing  a  game.  The  guard- 
house, which,  until  the  introduction  of  the  plan, 
had  always  been  full  of  foreign-speaking  soldiers,  sud- 
denly became  deserted.  From  being  the  worst  organi- 
zation at  the  camp,  the  "Foreign  Legion,"  as  it  was 
called,  became  the  model  battahon. 


3So      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

The  plan,  followed  both  at  Camp  D evens  and 
Camp  Gordon,  of  providing  the  foreign-speaking  organi- 
zation with  foreign-speaking  non-commissioned  officers 
of  unquestioned  loyalty  served  an  additional  purpose  in 
that  it  provided  the  Intelligence  Division  with  new 
and  valuable  sources  of  information,  for  the  non-com- 
missioned officers,  being  familiar  with  the  language, 
customs,  and  modes  of  thought  of  their  men,  could 
easily  detect  any  undercurrent  of  disaffection  or  dis- 
loyalty. Their  common  speech  would  at  once  estab- 
lish a  bond  of  sympathy  that  would  be  likely  to  disarm 
the  suspicions  of  an  enemy  agent  or  sympathizer. 
Moreover,  the  speech  and  characteristics  of  peoples 
living  in  close  proximity  to  each  other,  though  divided 
by  an  international  frontier,  are  usually  so  nearly  iden- 
tical that  no  one  can  distinguish  between  them  save  a 
person  who  himself  comes  from  that  region.  Only  a 
man  who  had  himself  lived  on  the  Russo- German 
frontier,  for  example,  would  be  able  to  say  with  cer- 
tainty whether  a  certain  soldier  came  from  Russian, 
Austrian,  or  German  Poland;  from  Galicia  or  Lithu- 
ania; from  Transylvania,  Besserabia,  or  the  Ukraine. 
An  incident  which  occurred  at  one  of  the  camps  illus- 
trates this  principle  as  applied  to  the  Oriental  races. 
A  civilian  agent  of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division, 
who  was  an  Armenian,  noticed  that  a  soldier  who 
claimed  to  be  a  Syrian  refused  to  eat  pork.  Being 
perfectly  familiar  with  both  Turkish  and  Syrian  cus- 
toms, and  knowing  that  the  Turks,  who  are  Moham- 
medans, are  forbidden  to  eat  pork,  while  the  Syrians, 
who  are  Christians,  are  not,  the  operative  sharply 


"M.  I."  381 

questioned  the  pretended  Syrian,  who  at  length  con- 
fessed that  he  was  a  Turk,  and,  consequently,  an 
enemy  alien.  Such  a  slight  indication  would  have 
passed  unnoticed  save  by  one  familiar  with  Oriental 
customs,  and  a  dangerous  enemy  agent  might  thus 
have  escaped  detection. 

To  M  I  4  was  intrusted  the  extremely  important 
work  of  counter-espionage  among  the  civilian  popula- 
tion. It  investigated  the  activities  of  the  enemy  in 
propaganda,  in  sabotage,  and  in  the  establishment  of 
communications  with  the  home  country;  it  investigated 
such  of  his  trade  activities  and  financial  transactions 
as  might  impede  our  successful  prosecution  of  the  war; 
it  discovered  enemy  influences  among  political,  racial, 
and  religious  groups  and  in  labor  organizations,  and  it 
watched  persons  throughout  the  nation  who,  though  not 
associated  with  the  enemy,  were  nevertheless  engaged 
in  pacifist,  revolutionary,  and  similar  activities  which 
were  likely  to  interfere  with  our  military  operations. 
The  section  operated  through  many  agencies.  As  a 
branch  of  the  War  Department,  it  employed  intelli- 
gence officers  serving  with  troops  in  the  various  camps 
and  cantonments,  who  furnished  the  section  with 
much  valuable  information  relative  to  civilian  activi- 
ties which  reacted  upon  the  army.  Similar  informa- 
tion was  furnished  by  the  departmental  intelligence 
officers,  stationed  at  the  headquarters  of  the  several 
geographical  departments  of  the  army,  and  b}-  the 
military  attaches  in  foreign  countries.  The  Depart- 
ment of  Justice,  the  State  Department,  and  the  Office 
of  Naval  Intelligence  also  actively  co-operated  with 


382      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

the  section.  By  the  establishment  of  a  system  of 
counter-espionage  in  foreign  countries  the  section  suc- 
ceeded in  frustrating  many  of  the  German  plans  at 
their  source  and  in  counteracting  enemy  propaganda 
which,  had  it  gone  unchecked,  might  have  had  the 
gravest  results.  The  German  method  of  organized 
propaganda  was  well  illustrated  by  the  operations  of 
the  Chilean- German  League,  which  was  founded  in 
October,  191 6,  by  Chileans  of  German  descent,  its 
membership  including  commercial  agents,  priests,  pro- 
fessors, physicians,  merchants,  and  school-teachers. 
In  a  circular  dated  Valparaiso,  October  24,  191 7,  and 
marked  "Confidential,"  the  management  of  the  local 
branch  of  the  league  at  Valparaiso  announced  a  meet- 
ing to  be  held  jointly  with  the  representatives  of  all 
German  societies  of  the  city  for  the  purpose  of  found- 
ing a  propaganda  committee.  The  necessity  for  start- 
ing a  propaganda  on  a  large  scale  was  pointed  out, 
and  the  main  object  of  the  league,  that  of  urging  the 
maintenance  of  neutrality  by  the  Chilean  Government, 
was  described  in  detail.  The  importance  to  the  Allies 
of  the  German  ships  in  Chilean  waters  was  also  em- 
phasized, the  circular  saying,  in  part:  ".  .  .  if  we  suc- 
ceed in  postponing  the  rupture  of  relations  by  this 
propaganda  only  for  weeks,  we  have  aided  Germany 
and  her  allies  to  the  extent  of  millions,  harming  the 
Allies  at  the  same  time  by  millions."  Though  the 
league  succeeded  in  preventing  Chile  from  joining 
the  Allies,  the  vigilance  and  energy  displayed  by  the 
agents  of  our  counter-espionage  service  in  that  coun- 
try practically  nullified  the  effects  of  the  league's 
propaganda  in  South  America. 


"M.  I."  383 

From  the  beginning  of  the  war  until  its  end  the 
American  public  was  constantly  thrilled  by  the  sen- 
sational and  usually  highly  circumstantial  accounts 
which  appeared  in  the  press,  particularly  the  Sunday 
supplements,  of  the  operations  of  German  secret  agents 
in  the  United  States.  Every  one,  I  suppose,  has  heard, 
in  some  one  of  its  many  versions,  the  story  of  the  Ger- 
man spy  who  was  shot  in  the  telephone-booth  of  a 
New  York  hotel  by  a  Secret  Service  operative  while 
giving  a  confederate  information  relative  to  the  sailing 
of  American  transports.  Though  I  have  heard  that 
story  related,  with  minutest  detail,  in  clubs,  over  din- 
ner-tables, and  in  the  smoking-compartments  of  Pull- 
mans, I  never  heard  any  one  ask  the  quite  obvious 
questions  as  to  why  it  was  necessary  for  the  operative 
to  shoot  the  spy  instead  of  taking  him  alive,  or  how 
the  confederate  proposed  to  transmit  the  information 
to  Germany.  One  picturesque  version  of  the  story 
laid  the  scene  in  a  crowded  New  York  Subway  train, 
the  Secret  Service  man  having  his  automatic  in  his 
pocket  and  firing  through  the  cloth  of  his  coat.  Then 
there  was  the  equally  sensational  story  of  the  Hoboken 
family  in  whose  employ  was  a  German  spy  disguised 
as  a  maid  of  all  work.  One  day  she  mysteriously  dis- 
appeared, and  a  few  hours  after  her  disappearance 
Secret  Service  agents  called  at  the  house  and  searched 
the  belongings  she  had  left  behind  her.  Their  search 
was  rewarded  by  discovering,  under  a  false  bottom  in 
her  trunk,  a  complete  set  of  the  plans  of  the  defenses 
of  New  York  harbor.  Variations  of  that  tale  placed 
its  locale  in  Stamford,  Conn.,  in  Chittenango,  N.  Y., 
in  Newton  Centre,  Mass.,  in  Key  West,  and  in  Los 


384      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Angeles,  while  the  papers  discovered  in  the  mysterious 
trunk  ranged  all  the  way  from  drawings  of  coast-defense 
guns  to  a  copy  of  the  German  Naval  Code.  The  same 
hysteria  which  led  the  public  to  accept  these  ridiculous 
concoctions  at  their  face  value,  and  to  beg  for  more, 
caused  them  to  suspect  all  sorts  of  well-known  persons 
of  being  engaged  in  espionage  activities — the  general 
commanding  a  certain  American  division,  a  famous 
woman  aviator,  a  still  more  famous  prima  donna,  a 
Jewish  banker  noted  for  his  philanthropies,  the  chan- 
cellor of  a  great  university,  and  even  the  secretary  to 
the  President  having  been  discovered — so  the  rumors 
had  it — to  be  German  spies.  At  one  period  of  the 
war,  indeed,  it  was  popularly  reported  that  spies  were 
executed  every  morning  at  daybreak  on  Governor's 
Island.  Now  I  dislike  to  destroy  illusions  and  to  spoil 
perfectly  good  stories,  but  the  dictates  of  truth  com- 
pel me  to  assert  that  not  a  single  spy  was  executed  on 
Governor's  Island  or  anywhere  else  in  the  United 
States,  though  it  is  my  personal  opinion  that  a  few 
such  executions  would  have  brought  to  an  abrupt  end 
the  series  of  fires,  explosions,  strikes,  and  other  cases 
of  sabotage  for  which  the  agents  of  the  Wilhelmstrasse 
were  responsible.  For  stating  this  opinion,  quite  early 
in  the  war,  at  a  dinner  in  Boston  at  which  I  was  a 
speaker,  I  received  a  mild  reprimand  from  the  Ad- 
jutant-General of  the  Army.  On  the  occasion  in  ques- 
tion I  remarked,  if  I  remember  rightly,  that  I  was 
convinced  that  the  most  effective  method  of  dealing 
with  spies  was  not  to  intern  them  but  to  inter  them. 
And  I  am  still  of  the  same  opinion. 


"M.  I."  385 

Though  Germany  had  a  number  of  secret  agents 
operating  in  the  United  States — though  not  nearly 
as  many  as  was  generally  supposed — the  only  one 
of  them  who  measured  up  to  the  popular  conception 
of  a  spy  was  a  woman  known  as  Madame  de  Victorica. 
In  certain  respects  she  came  very  near  to  meeting  the 
specifications  for  an  international  adventuress  as  laid 
down  in  the  mystery  stories  of  Messrs.  Chambers  and 
Oppenheim.  The  results  she  obtained  were,  how- 
ever, distinctly  disappointing — at  least  from  the  Wil- 
helmstrasse  point  of  view.  Her  father  was  the  Prus- 
sian general  to  whom  Marshal  Bazaine  handed  his 
sword  at  the  surrender  of  Metz;  her  mother  was  a 
Prussian  countess;  her  sister  was  married  to  a  Prus- 
sian nobleman,  and  her  brother  was  a  Jesuit  priest 
serving  as  a  chaplain  in  the  Austrian  Army.  Madame 
de  Victorica  has  had  three  husbands — all  South  Amer- 
icans. Two  died  within  a  few  months  after  marrying 
the  handsome  adventuress;  the  third  was  divorced. 
According  to  her  confession,  Madame  de  Victorica 
was  trained  in  espionage  work  at  the  Naval  Intel- 
ligence Bureau  in  Berlin  and  was  sent  to  the  United 
States  by  the  authorities  of  the  Wilhelmstrassc  for 
the  purposes  of  obtaining  military  and  naval  informa- 
tion, to  foment  labor  troubles,  to  tamper  with  the 
Roman  Catholic  clergy,  and  to  lay  the  plans  for  a  re- 
bellion in  Ireland  more  successful  than  the  abortive 
one  of  1 9 16.  She  memorized  a  code  before  leaving 
Berlin.  The  secret  ink  in  which  her  letters  were  writ- 
ten was  given  her  at  the  Chemical  Institute  and  was 
carried  in  two  silk  mufflers,  the  ink  being  obtained  by 


386      THE  ARIVIY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

saturating  them  in  cold  water  and  wringing  them. 
Writing  in  this  ink  could  be  developed  with  iodine  tab- 
lets, manufactured  by  a  well-known  firm  of  London 
chemists,  dissolved  in  vinegar.  Other  messages  were 
transmitted  by  means  of  pin-pricking  certain  letters  in 
newspapers.  Madame  de  Victorica  was  unquestion- 
ably a  woman  of  considerable  intelligence  and  social 
position;  she  had  had  some  experience  as  a  journalist, 
and  was  apparently  credited  by  the  Germans  with 
quickness  of  wit  and  resourcefulness  as  an  organizer. 
This  reputation  she  only  partly  justified,  however,  for 
she  talked  indiscreetly  on  the  steamer  while  coming 
over,  wasted  time  and  money  after  her  arrival  in  New 
York  in  buying  elaborate  gowns,  and  was  an  inveterate 
user  of  drugs.  As  the  result  of  converging  lines  of 
inquiry  pursued  by  MiHtary  Intelligence  and  the  De- 
partment of  Justice,  she  was  arrested,  together  with 
several  of  her  confederates,  in  August,  1918.  There 
3^ou  have  a  thumb-nail  sketch,  as  it  were,  of  the  most 
dangerous  German  agent  in  America.  She  can  thank 
her  lucky  stars  that  the  Wilhelmstrasse  sent  her  to 
the  United  States  instead  of  to  France  or  England,  for 
had  she  been  caught  in  either  of  those  countries  her 
career  would  have  ended  not  between  stone  waUs  but 
between  a  stone  wall  and  a  firing-party. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  understand,  if  not  to  sympa- 
thize, with  the  reasons  which  led  Madame  de  Victorica 
to  come  to  the  United  States  in  the  capacity  of  a  Ger- 
man spy,  for  she  was,  after  all,  German  to  the  core, 
her  relatives  for  generations  before  her  having  held 
high  positions  under  the  Prussian  crown.     But  it  is 


*'M.  I."  387 

not  easy,  indeed  it  is  almost  impossible,  for  a  loyal 
American  to  understand  how  men  who  were  born  and 
educated  in  the  United  States  and  who  had  a  long  line 
of  American  ancestors  behind  them,  could  sell  their 
honor  and  their  loyalty  for  German  gold.  It  is,  how- 
ever, a  curious  and  regrettable  fact  that  certain  per- 
sons whose  disloyalty  was  proved  beyond  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt  were  purely  American,  so  far  as  their  birth 
and  par'';ntage  were  concerned,  their  only  connections 
with  Germany  being  financial  ones.  Of  these  I  have 
particularly  in  mind  three  men,  all,  if  I  am  not  mis- 
taken, possessing  university  educations,  who  were  jour- 
nalists and  correspondents  of  considerable  standing 
uiitil  the  discovery  of  their  pro-German  activities 
blasted  their  reputations  and  plunged  them  into  obliv- 
ion. One  of  them — a  correspondent  who  had  seen 
service  in  severa.'  wars — was  caught  in  the  act  of 
carrying  messages  from  the  Austrian  Ambassador  in 
Washington  to  Berlin.  He  was  arrested  by  British 
intelligence  officers  and  returned  to  the  United  States. 
His  passport  was  taken  from  him,  and  those  who 
were  once  his  friends  now  pass  him  by  without  speak- 
ing. Another  of  these  gentry  succeeded,  in  spite  of 
his  German  sympathies  and  affiliations,  in  obtaining 
admission  to  a  training-camp,  being  given  a  commis- 
sion and  sent  to  France.  But,  as  the  result  of  repre- 
sentations made  by  the  Intelligence  Division,  which 
was  thoroughly  familiar  with  his  career,  he  was 
brought  back  to  the  United  States,  subjected  to  an 
official  interrogation,  confessed,  and,  though  he  made 
desperate  efforts  to  have  the  President  accept  his  resig- 


388      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

nation,  was  dismissed  from  the  army  "for  the  good  of 
the  service."  The  third  of  this  precious  trio  went  to 
Germany  as  a  correspondent,  at  once  constituted 
himself  a  champion  of  everything  German,  savagely 
attacked  the  land  of  his  birth,  and,  upon  the  fall  of 
the  Kaiser,  fled  to  Sweden,  where,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
he  is  still  living  in  exile,  a  real  "Man  Without  a  Coun- 
try." 

The  great  organization  built  up  by  Von  Papen 
and  his  fellows  for  purposes  of  sabotage  made  it  im- 
perative, upon  the  entry  of  the  United  States  ini>  the 
war,  that  a  system  should  immediately  be  devised  for 
the  protection  of  those  plants  and  workers  engaged  in 
the  manufacture  of  munitions.  With  the  declaratioD 
of  war  the  United  States  became,  almost  overnight, 
the  greatest  manufacturer  of  war  materials  in  the 
world.  In  every  city  in  the  land  factories  producing 
the  tools  of  the  fighter's  trade  were  running  night  and 
day,  and  other  factories,  hundreds  of  them,  began  to 
spring  up  as  though  at  the  wave  of  a  magician's  wand. 
The  nation  was  a-hum  with  feverish  industry  from 
ocean  to  ocean.  But  of  what  avail  was  this  tremen- 
dous wave  of  manufacturing  activity,  of  what  use  the 
expenditure  of  biUions  in  the  erection  and  operation 
of  plants  and  factories,  unless  those  plants  and  fac- 
tories were  afforded  protection  against  fire  and  the 
acts  of  enemy  agents?  To  fill  this  need  there  was 
organized,  in  July,  191 7,  the  Plant  Protection  Section 
of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division. 

The  system  of  plant  protection  provided,  first  of 
all,  for  a  physical  examination  of  the  munition  facto- 


"M.  I."  389 

ries  of  the  country  with  a  view  to  minimizing  the 
danger  of  their  destruction  by  fire.  Basing  their  plans 
on  the  estimates  of  the  insurance  companies  that  85 
per  cent  of  all  fires  are  the  result  of  carelessness,  the 
inspectors  sent  out  by  the  section  insisted,  as  a  measure 
essential  to  the  success  of  their  work,  on  a  systematic 
and  wholesale  house-cleaning,  the  wave  of  cleanliness 
which  struck  those  American  plants  engaged  in  the 
manufacture  of  munitions  during  the  first  year  of  the 
war  being  directly  traceable  to  the  orders  of  the  Plant 
Protection  Section.  The  officers  of  the  section  next 
turned  their  attention  to  measures  for  the  prevention  of 
sabotage  and  the  fomentation  of  labor  troubles  by  ene- 
my agents,  which  was  accomplished  by  the  introduction 
of  what  was  known  as  the  "interior  organization  sys- 
tem." This  consisted  in  the  establishment  within  the 
plant  of  a  complete  espionage  system,  composed  of  old 
and  trusted  employees,  who  worked  as  Secret  Service 
agents,  and  were  unknown  to  one  another.  In  cases 
where  it  was  deemed  necessar}^  this  body  was  re- 
enforced  by  trained  and  experienced  operatives  from 
the  Plant  Protection  Section,  who  usually  obtained 
positions  as  workmen  in  the  plant  without  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  management.  By  this  means  the  perpe- 
trators of  many  cases  of  sabotage  were  discovered,  in- 
cipient strikes  were  prevented,  agitators  and  profes- 
sional trouble-makers  were  kept  under  surveillance, 
and,  if  their  actions  warranted,  were  placed  under 
arrest,  and  an  unceasing  watch  kept  on  the  movements 
of  enemy  agents.  The  campaign  of  sabotage  and  de- 
struction which  German  sympathizers  had  been  con- 


390      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

ducting  almost  unchecked  was  abruptly  halted,  for  so 
wide-spread  and  efficient  was  the  section's  organization 
that  the  enemy  agent  was  constantly  haunted  by  the 
fear  that  his  most  trusted  confederate  might  be  a 
secret  operative  who  was  watching  his  every  action. 
Though  it  never  had  more  than  400  active  agents  (this 
does  not  include,  of  course,  the  enormous  number  of 
volunteer  operatives  recruited  from  the  workers  them- 
selves), the  section  extended  its  protection  to  more 
than  37,000  manufacturing  plants,  and,  during  the 
period  of  its  war-time  operations,  made  upward  of 
270,000  recommendations  for  arrests,  investigations, 
and  prosecutions,  or  for  further  plant  protection. 

Agents  of  the  Plant  Protection  Section  succeeded 
in  gaining  admission  to  the  innermost  councils  of  the 
I.  W.  W.  and  kindred  organizations,  and,  by  thus 
obtaining  advance  notice  of  any  contemplated  action, 
were  successful  in  averting  strikes  and  labor  troubles 
which  would  have  caused  the  loss  of  millions  of  dol- 
lars, and,  through  halting  the  flow  of  munitions  to  the 
front,  the  loss  of  thousands  of  American  lives.  The 
success  of  the  section  in  this  phase  of  its  work  was 
due,  first,  as  I  have  already  explained,  to  its  ability  to 
obtain  advance  information  of  impending  trouble,  and, 
secondly,  to  the  fact  that  the  agents  of  the  section 
were  in  a  position  to  handle  a  delicate  labor  situation 
in  an  absolutely  impartial  manner,  taking  no  sides  and 
inspiring  the  confidence  of  both  employers  and  em- 
ployees. Thus  it  came  about  that  the  section  was 
frequently  able  to  compose  differences  between  capital 
and  labor  when  other  arbitrators,  who  did  not  so  com- 


"M.  I."  391 

pletely  hold  the  confidence  of  both  parties  to  the  dis- 
pute, failed. 

After  the  Armistice  the  activities  of  the  section 
consisted,  in  the  main,  in  protecting  the  government 
against  fraudulent  claims  presented  by  manufacturers 
and  in  guarding  the  great  plants  and  warehouses  which 
were  abandoned  upon  the  cancellation  of  war  contracts. 
In  one  case  the  section  obtained  and  prepared  evidence 
for  a  grand  jury  which  so  conclusively  showed  fraud 
on  the  part  of  certain  manufacturers  holding  govern- 
ment contracts,  that  another  concern,  which  had 
already  presented  claims  amounting  to  $600,000,  upon 
learning  that  they  were  being  investigated  by  agents 
of  the  section,  hurriedly  withdrew  them.  Another 
example  of  the  efficiency  which  characterized  the  work 
of  the  section  is  illustrated  by  the  case  of  a  concern 
engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  shells,  the  evidence 
presented  by  the  section  resulting  in  the  indictment 
of  the  president  and  ten  other  officials  of  the  company 
for  submitting  shells  to  the  government  for  inspection 
under  fraudulent  circumstances. 

The  difficult,  perplexing,  and  highly  delicate  work 
connected  with  the  various  phases  of  the  censorship 
was  intrusted  to  the  Tenth  Section  of  Mihtar}'^  Intelli- 
gence, a  number  of  subsections  being  established  for 
the  censorship  of  mail  matter,  telegraphs  and  tele- 
phones, radio,  books  and  permanent  literature,  foreign- 
language  newspapers,  religious  and  pacifist  publica- 
tions, photographs,  motion-pictures,  and  mail  to  or 
from  prisoners  of  war. 


392      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

To  assume  censorship  of  the  mails  was  a  new 
experience  to  our  government,  for  it  was  in  direct 
opposition  to  American  customs  and  traditions  and 
was  extremely  repugnant  to  a  large  and  influential  sec- 
tion of  the  American  people.  It  was  undertaken,  in- 
deed, only  after  its  necessity  had  been  urgently  and 
repeatedly  emphasized  by  our  allies.  Early  in  the 
war  France  had  taken  over  the  censorship  of  the  Swiss 
mails,  leaving  to  England  the  supervision  of  the  mails 
to  and  from  Holland  and  the  Scandinavian  countries. 
Little  attention  had  been  paid,  however,  to  the  Span- 
ish, Mexican,  and  Central  and  South  American  mails, 
save  w^hen  they  passed  through  the  postal  barrier 
erected  by  the  Allied  censorship  around  the  neutral 
states  of  Europe.  The  first  problem  that  faced  the 
American  censors,  therefore,  was  to  close  the  channels 
of  information  leading  into  Germany  through  Spain, 
or  out  of  Germany,  via  Spain,  to  the  Americas,  Spain 
being  in  constant  communication  with  Berlin  by  a 
powerful  system  of  wireless.  Upon  our  entrance  into 
the  war  it  became  imperative  to  close  this  gap  in  the 
news  blockade  which  was  in  force  against  the  enemy. 
This  done,  the  only  possible  way  for  a  German  sympa- 
thizer in  the  western  hemisphere  to  communicate 
with  Germany  was  indirectly,  through  an  intermediary 
in  a  neutral  country,  it  becoming  necessary  for  a  Ger- 
man agent  in  South  America,  for  example,  to  direct 
his  communications  to  some  confederate  in  Holland  or 
Scandinavia.  Such  communications,  which  were  usu- 
ally disguised  as  innocent  social  or  business  letters,  but 
in  reality  contained  concealed  messages  in  code,  cipher, 


"M.  I."  393 

or  invisible  ink,  would  then  be  transcribed  by  the  con- 
federate in  the  neutral  country  and  forwarded  to  the 
particular  bureau  of  the  German  Government  for 
which  they  were  intended,  either  by  special  courier  or 
through  ordinary  postal  channels. 

Owing  to  the  peculiar  position  of  the  United 
States  and  its  distance  from  the  actual  battle-front, 
about  95  per  cent  of  its  postal-censorship  work  was 
negative  in  character  and  only  5  per  cent  positive, 
these  terms,  "negative"  and  ''positive,"  being  used 
in  the  same  sense  as  they  applied  to  other  activities  of 
Military  InteUigence.  By  far  the  greater  part  of  the 
mail  that  required  censorship  was  of  a  nature  which 
might  have  caused  social  unrest,  labor  troubles,  or 
even  rebellion  in  this  country.  Only  a  comparatively 
small  number  of  letters  were  intercepted  which  brought 
positive  information  concerning  the  plans  of  the  enemy 
or  of  neutrals.  In  studying  this  positive  information 
it  was  necessary  for  the  censors  to  keep  constantl}'  in 
mind  the  fact  that  the  enemy  intentionally  permitted 
false  information  to  be  sent  out,  which,  were  it  taken 
at  its  face  value,  might  lead  us  to  alter  our  plans  or  to 
relax  our  efforts.  For  periods  of  two  or  three  months, 
perhaps  longer,  immediately  preceding  each  of  the 
great  German  offensives,  there  trickled  into  the  offices 
of  the  censor  scores  of  letters  depicting  in  heartrending 
terms  the  social  unrest  and  the  appalling  food  condi- 
tions in  the  Fatherland. 

Early  in  19 18  the  United  States,  following  the 
example  of  France  and  England,  established  large 
chemical  laboratories  in  New  York  and  Washington, 


394      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

where  thousands  of  letters  were  subjected  to  tests  for 
inx'isible  ink.  The  usual  letter-paper  which  is  used 
for  communications  in  invisible  ink  can  be  given  minor 
tests  without  altering  its  appearance.  These  prelimi- 
nary tests  are  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  whether 
the  paper  has  been  moistened  or  subjected  to  other 
treatment  preparatory  to  the  use  of  invisible  ink.  In 
case  the  minor  tests  show  the  paper  has  received  some 
unusual  treatment,  a  major  test  is  given  which  results 
in  developing  any  invisible  writing,  though  it  at  the 
same  time  affects  the  texture  and  color  of  the  station- 
ery so  that  it  is  impossible  to  restore  it  to  its  original 
appearance.  Practically  all  mail  to  or  from  persons 
on  the  suspect  lists  kept  by  England,  France,  and  the 
United  States  was  subjected  to  such  examination. 

By  assuming  the  censorship  of  the  Spanish,  West 
Indian,  and  Latin  American  mails,  the  American 
authorities  were  able  to  break  up  the  trade  relations 
which  up  to  that  time  had  existed  between  German 
sympathizers  in  the  United  States  and  German  for- 
warding agents  in  South  America.  In  the  latter 
months  of  the  war  Germany  found  herself  in  desperate 
need  of  rubber  in  any  form  for  use  in  electrical  devices, 
particularly  for  the  construction  of  electrical  apparatus 
to  be  used  in  torpedoes  and  submarines.  Hence  we 
find  the  censorship  intercepting  suspicious  orders  for 
such  goods  as  dental  rubber,  tobacco-pouches,  rubber 
soles  and  heels.  The  censorship  also  intercepted  and 
confiscated  hundreds  of  tons  of  German  propaganda 
literature  prepared  by  German  agents  in  Spain  and 
intended  for  distribution  in  Latin  America.     Had  this 


"M.  I."  395 

propaganda  reached  the  German  agents  in  South  and 
Central  America  to  whom  it  was  addressed  and  had  it 
been  distributed  in  accordance  with  their  plans,  it 
would  unquestionably  have  resulted  in  great  social 
unrest,  political  demonstrations,  and  revolutions,  if 
not,  indeed,  in  actual  war  between  certain  Latin 
American  countries,  thus  interrupting  our  supply  of 
certain  products  essential  to  the  manufacture  of  muni- 
tions. Had  the  Germans,  for  example,  succeeded  in 
starting  a  war  between  Chile  and  Bolivia  over  the 
Tacna-Arica  question,  our  supply  of  Chilean  nitrates, 
which  we  imported  in  enormous  quantities,  in  all  prob- 
ability would  have  been  cut  off.  In  fact,  it  was  the 
likelihood  of  just  such  an  occurrence  which  led  us  to 
spend  millions  of  dollars  in  the  erection  of  nitrate  plants 
in  the  United  States,  thus  making  us  independent  of 
the  Chilean  nitrate  beds.  The  censorship  was  likewise 
largely  responsible  for  preventing  revolutions  which 
were  planned  to  take  place  simultaneously  in  Cuba 
and  Mexico.  German  agents  had  planned  to  launch 
a  revolution  in  the  Oriente  province  of  Cuba  with  a 
view  to  burning  the  cane-fields,  while  at  the  same  time 
an  insurrection  was  to  break  out  in  the  Tampico  dis- 
trict of  Mexico,  thus  providing  an  excuse  for  the  de- 
struction of  the  oil-wells.  Had  this  plan  been  success- 
ful— and  it  came  much  nearer  being  successful  than 
most  persons  realize — our  main  sources  of  supply  for 
oil  and  sugar  would  have  disappeared.  But  the  plot- 
ters in  Cuba  were  indiscreet  enough  to  discuss  their 
plans  in  letters  sent  to  their  representatives  in  the 
United  States;  these  letters  were  intercepted  by  the 


396      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

postal  censors,  and  a  few  days  later  a  transport,  loaded 
to  the  gunwales  with  American  Marines,  set  sail  for 
Guantanamo.  The  commander  of  the  Marines  had 
orders  to  prevent  the  peace  of  the  island  republic  from 
being  disturbed.  And  he  did.  For  which  we — and 
the  Cubans — have  to  thank  the  postal  censors. 

It  did  not  take  the  government  long  to  realize 
that,  if  the  cable  and  postal  censorships  were  to  be 
made  sufficiently  water-tight  to  prevent  our  military 
secrets  leaking  through  to  the  enemy,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  reinforce  them  with  a  censorship  of 
photographs  and  motion-picture  films.  Accordingly, 
the  Censorship  Section  of  Military  Intelligence  was 
charged,  in  addition  to  its  numerous  other  duties, 
with  the  censorship  of  all  pictures  taken  by  military 
photographers  for  the  use  of  the  Committee  on  Public 
Information  and  for  other  publicity  purposes,  as  well 
as  of  those  taken  for  commercial  purposes  by  private 
concerns.  In  order  to  keep  our  own  people,  as  well  as 
those  of  the  Allied  and  neutral  countries,  acquainted 
with  the  progress  which  the  United  States  was  making 
in  the  business  of  war,  scores  of  cameramen  belonging 
to  the  Photographic  Section  of  the  Signal  Corps  were 
sent  out,  at  the  request  of  the  Committee  on  Public 
Information,  to  take  pictures  at  the  cantonments,  train- 
ing-camps, and  munition  factories  in  this  country  and 
in  the  theatres  of  operations  overseas.  As,  however, 
there  were  countless  details  of  our  equipment,  muni- 
tions, training  methods,  and  the  like  of  which  the 
enemy  must  be  kept  in  ignorance,  it  was  imperative 
that  all  such  pictures  be  carefully  examined  and  passed 


"M.  I."  397 

upon  before  being  released  for  i)ublication  or  exhibi- 
tion. And,  moreover,  they  must  be  passed  upon  by 
men  who  were  authorities  on  the  various  phases  of 
the  army  with  which  the  pictures  dealt.  That  it  was 
a  matter  which  could  not  be  left  with  safety  to  ama- 
teurs was  emphasized  by  an  incident  which  occurred 
in  October,  191 8,  when  the  great  AUied  offensive  was 
at  its  height.  One  Sunday  morning  the  officers  of 
the  General  Staff  were  astounded  to  see,  in  the  illus- 
trated supplement  of  a  New  York  newspaper,  detailed 
photographs  of  the  new  French  howitzers,  the  very 
existence  of  which  up  to  that  time  had  been  one  of 
the  most  carefully  guarded  secrets  of  the  Allies.  The 
young  officer  who  passed  the  pictures  for  publication 
explained  that,  not  being  an  artilleryman,  the  howit- 
zers looked  like  any  other  guns  to  him.  A  few  weeks 
later  the  Staff  was  again  surprised  and  angered  to  see 
another  secret — the  small  tanks  which  were  being 
manufactured  in  this  country — revealed  in  the  same 
paper.  Here  was  another  case  of  an  officer  having 
passed  a  photograph  dealing  with  a  subject  of  which 
he  was  ignorant.  In  order  to  prevent  a  repetition  of 
such  blunders,  the  Censorship  Section  arranged  to 
work  in  close  co-operation  with  the  Chief  Naval  Censor 
and  with  experts  in  the  offices  of  the  Chief  of  Coast 
Artillery,  the  Chief  of  Field  Artillery-,  the  Chief  of 
Ordnance,  the  Director  of  Mihtary  Aeronautics,  the 
Bureau  of  Aircraft  Production,  the  quartermaster- 
general  and  the  surgeon-general,  these  experts  being 
consulted  in  regard  to  all  pictures  relating  to  their 
respective  arms  of  the  service.    With  their  assistance 


398      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

a  series  of  precedents  was  established  and  a  set  of  regu- 
lations for  the  censorship  of  photographs  was  evolved. 
Among  the  pictures  withheld  from  the  public  were 
those  dealing  with  new  inventions  of  mihtary  signif- 
icance, such  as  radio  telephony;  with  all  examples  of 
military  and  naval  camouflage,  and  with  the  various 
new  types  of  artillery,  especially  those  on  tractor 
mounts.  Such  photographs  as  were  not  released  were 
placed  in  the  archives  of  the  War  College  to  become 
a  permanent  part  of  the  pictorial  history  of  the  war, 
while  those  which  were  passed  were  turned  over  to 
the  Committee  on  Public  Information  for  distribution 
to  the  various  agencies  which  were  in  a  position  to 
give  them  the  greatest  publicity.  There  was  also  an 
informal,  intimate,  and  extremely  valuable  service 
which  the  section  was  able  to  perform.  As  pictures 
were  received  from  the  A.  E.  F.,  a  systematic  effort 
was  made  to  furnish  to  the  relatives  and  friends  of 
soldiers  serving  overseas  copies  of  the  photographs 
or  sections  of  the  films  in  which  their  loved  ones  ap- 
peared, of  the  hospitals  in  which  they  were  being 
treated,  or  of  the  spots  where  they  were  buried.  As 
a  result  of  this  official  thoughtfulness,  comfort  was 
given  to  many  a  lonely  wife,  many  an  anxious  parent. 
A  no  less  important  phase  of  the  section's  activi- 
ties was  the  censorship  of  still  and  motion  pictures 
taken  for  commercial  use  at  home  and  abroad  and 
the  supervision  of  the  firms  and  individuals  taking 
them.  When  one  remembers  that  "The  Birth  of  a 
Nation"  is  estimated  to  have  been  seen  by  60,000,000 
people,  a  realization  can  be  had  of  the  enormous  pos- 


"M.  I."  399 

sibilities  of  the  motion-picture  for  purposes  of  propa- 
ganda and  the  necessity  of  subjecting  it  to  rigid 
censorship.  Whenever  a  picture  contained  a  suggestion 
of  enemy  propaganda,  or  when  the  poHcy  of  a  pro- 
ducing company  appeared  to  be  antagonistic  to  the 
interests  of  the  United  States,  a  systematic  inves- 
tigation was  started  to  determine  the  loyalty  of  the 
officers  of  the  organization  and  the  source  of  its  finan- 
cial backing.  If  the  enemy  propaganda  was  evidently 
intentional,  steps  were  immediately  taken  to  prosecute 
the  producers  under  the  Espionage  Act.  If,  however, 
as  was  usually  the  case,  the  fault  was  due  to  mere  ig- 
norance or  thoughtlessness,  a  conference  with  the  per- 
sons concerned  generally  resulted  in  the  alteration  or 
withdrawal  of  the  offending  picture. 

Exceptional  precautions  were  observed  in  the 
censoring  of  films  destined  for  export.  This  work  was 
in  charge  of  the  Customs  Division  of  the  Treasury 
Department,  the  films  being  viewed  by  a  board  com- 
posed of  representatives  of  the  Customs,  Military  and 
Naval  IntelHgence,  and  the  Committee  on  Public  In- 
formation. If  a  member  of  this  board  made  any  ob- 
jection to  a  film  it  was  sent  to  the  custom-house  for 
review  by  another  board  of  censors.  If  the  matter 
to  be  deleted  was  unimportant,  the  objectionable  parts 
were  cut  out  in  the  projection  room.  If  the  film  was 
approved,  a  letter  of  clearance  was  issued  by  the 
Committee  on  Public  Information  and  an  export 
license  was  then  granted  by  the  War  Trade  Board; 
should  the  film  be  rejected,  the  license  was,  of  course, 
refused. 


400      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

In  censoring  commercial  films  and  photographs, 
every  effort  was  made  to  prevent  the  export  of  pic- 
tures which  might  reveal  the  war  secrets  of  the  United 
States,  which  might  be  distorted  and  used  as  enemy 
propaganda,  or  which  might  give  a  wrong  impression 
of  the  conditions  prevailing  in  this  country.  For  ex- 
ample, no  pictures  dealing  with  the  influenza  epidemic 
were  permitted  to  leave  the  country,  for  the  German 
Government  would  almost  certainly  have  used  them 
as  proof  that  the  man-power  of  America  was  seriously 
impaired,  thus  encouraging  the  German  people  to 
prolong  their  resistance.  An  export  license  was  re- 
fused to  a  picture  showing  the  effects  of  a  cyclone  in 
Tyler,  Texas,  because,  had  it  reached  Germany,  it 
would,  in  all  probability,  have  been  given  a  caption 
something  like  this:  "American  city  after  bombard- 
ment by  German  aircraft."  The  fact  that  there  were 
no  German  aircraft  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  would 
have  made  no  difference;  the  credulous  German  public 
would  have  greeted  such  a  picture  with  wild  applause. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  thousands  of  pictures  of  crumbling 
castles  in  England  and  of  French  ruins  dating  from 
the  Crusades  were  used  in  such  manner  by  the  Ger- 
mans. For  a  similar  reason,  the  beautiful  poster  drawn 
by  Joseph  Pennell  for  the  Fourth  Liberty  Loan,  de- 
picting New  York  City  in  ruins  as  the  result  of  a  raid 
by  German  aircraft,  was  not  permitted  to  go  abroad, 
for  it  would  have  been  only  too  easy  for  the  German 
Government  to  publish  it  as  an  official  picture  of  the 
devastation  wrought  by  German  airmen  in  the  Amer- 
ican metropolis.     I  have  wondered,  indeed,  why  the 


"M.  I."  401 

German  propaganda  bureau  did  not  publish  a  picture 
of  Pompeii  with  a  caption  to  the  effect  that  it  was  an 
Italian  city  destroyed  by  the  Austrian  fleet. 

Some  curious  schemes  were  perfected  by  German 
agents  in  the  United  States  to  convey  messages  to 
Germany  in  spite  of  the  censorship.  A  set  of  films 
depicting  cannibal  life  in  the  South  Seas  aroused  the 
suspicions  of  the  censors  because  of  the  irregularity 
of  the  perforations  and  because  of  certain  mysterious 
numbers  appearing  along  the  edges.  The  films  were 
finally  passed  for  export,  but  not  until  the  perforations 
and  numbers  had  been  trimmed  off.  On  another  oc- 
casion the  censor  seized  an  advertising  folder,  issued 
by  a  famous  New  York  department  store,  which  con- 
tained a  photograph  of  an  exceedingly  good-looking 
young  woman  wearing  an  embroidered  blouse  and  a 
plaid  skirt,  such  as  the  store  was  offering  for  sale.  The 
picture  showed  the  young  woman  standing  beside  a 
table,  holding  in  one  hand  a  volume  which,  upon  close 
inspection,  was  found  to  bear  the  peculiar  title  The 
Laborer^s  Catecliism.  Some  bright  mind  in  the  Cen- 
sorship Section  deduced  that  this  title  was  really  the 
key  to  a  code  message,  and  that  the  message  itself 
was  contained  in  the  embroidery  on  the  blouse.  The 
story,  which  appeared  to  have  all  the  elements  of  a 
first-class  spy  tale,  was  spoiled,  however,  by  the  un- 
romantic  code  experts  of  M  I  8,  who  professed  them- 
selves unable  to  find  any  message  concealed  in  the 
embroidery.  Both  the  department  store  and  the 
photographers  who  took  the  picture  were  entirely 
absolved  of  any  attempt  to  communicate  with  the 


402      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

enemy,  and  the  young  woman  herself  was  found  in 
a  hospital,  desperately  ill  with  influenza.  When  the 
agents  of  the  Department  of  Justice  visited  the  hos- 
pital some  time  later  for  the  purpose  of  interrogating 
her,  it  was  found  that  she  had  left  for  parts  unknown. 
Whether  the  message  was  embroidery  or  imaginar}^ 
I  do  not  pretend  to  say.  I  merely  repeat  the  story 
because  it  illustrates  the  extreme  caution  exercised  by 
the  Censorship  Section.  Knowing  the  cunning  of 
the  Teuton,  it  was  taking  no  chances. 

Speaking  of  false  scents  in  the  tracking  of  spies, 
I  remember  being  told  in  England  of  an  old  lady,  ap- 
parently a  woman  of  some  means,  living  in  a  suburb 
of  London,  who  was  accustomed  to  write  several  times 
a  week  to  her  daughter  in  Austria.  The  letters,  being 
addressed  to  an  enemy  country,  were,  of  course,  opened 
by  the  censor.  Though  there  was  nothing  in  the  com- 
munications themselves  which  could,  by  any  stretch 
of  the  imagination,  be  interpreted  as  treason,  the  sus- 
picions of  the  officials  were  instantly  aroused  by  the 
discovery  that  each  letter  contained  three  new  playing- 
cards.  One  letter  might  contain,  for  example,  the  ace 
of  hearts,  the  ten  of  clubs,  and  the  king  of  diamonds; 
in  the  next  letter,  posted  a  few  days  later,  would  be 
the  seven  and  the  nine  of  spades  and  the  king  of 
hearts.  Here  was  a  code  which  baffled  every  expert  in 
the  United  Kingdom.  British  Intelligence,  the  Censor's 
Bureau,  and  the  Criminal  Investigation  Department 
of  Scotland  Yard  all  tried  to  ferret  out  the  mystery 
of  the  cards,  but  without  success.  Every  conceivable 
test  was  applied  to  both  the  letters  and  the  cards  for 


"M.  I."  403 

codes,  ciphers,  and  invisible  \\Titing,  but  \\ithout  an 
atom  of  success.  At  length  the  old  lady,  whose  every 
movement  had  been  shadowed  for  weeks,  was  sum- 
moned to  Scotland  Yard  and  questioned.  WTien  the 
chief  inquisitor  suddenly  demanded  of  her  why  she 
enclosed  playing-cards  in  her  letters  to  her  daughter, 
she  replied:  "My  daughter  is  a  great  bridge-player, 
and  when  I  read  in  the  newspapers  that  it  was  impos- 
sible to  get  cards  in  Austria,  I  thought  I  would  slip 
three  or  four  cards  into  ever}^  letter.  In  that  way, 
you  see,  I  would  be  able  to  send  her  a  pack  every  five 
or  sLx  weeks." 

To  another  subsection  of  M  I  10  was  delegated 
the  censorship  of  mail  to  and  from  the  prisoners  of 
war  in  the  various  internment  camps  in  the  United 
States.  As  there  were  nearly  6,000  of  these  interned 
enemies,  and  as  they  were  permitted,  by  the  regula- 
tions, to  send  nearly  40,000  letters  and  post-cards  a 
month,  no  limit  being  placed  on  the  amount  of  mail 
they  could  receive,  the  task  of  censoring  this  mass  of 
correspondence,  most  of  it  in  languages  other  than 
English,  was  very  far  from  being  a  sinecure.  The 
primary  object  of  this  censorship  was  to  prevent  the 
passing  of  objectionable  communications,  such  as  at- 
tacks on  the  government  or  information  which  might 
be  of  value  to  the  enemy.  The  censors  were  also  con- 
stantly on  the  watch  to  prevent  the  prisoners  from 
acting  as  correspondence  intermediaries;  that  is,  from 
transmitting  messages  from  Germany  to  German  s\-m- 
pathizers  in  the  United  States,  or  vice  versa.  The  kind 
of  paper  to  be  used  by  the  prisoners  for  their  corre- 


404      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

spondence  was  selected  by  the  subsection  with  a  view 
to  making  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  the  use  of  secret 
inks.  Thousands  of  letters,  both  to  and  from  the 
prisoners,  were  submitted  to  chemical  tests  for  invisible 
writing,  and  hundreds  of  others,  which  aroused  sus- 
picion because  of  their  pecuHar  wording  or  unusual 
marking,  were  examined  for  possible  messages  in  code. 
One  prisoner  endeavored  to  communicate  with  his 
wife  by  writing  in  lemon-juice  under  the  flap  of  the 
envelope,  and  at  Fort  Douglas  a  scheme  was  discovered 
whereby  German  sympathizers  communicated  with 
the  prisoners  by  means  of  dots  placed  under  the  letters 
of  words  in  newspapers  sent  into  the  internment  camp. 
In  the  days  before  the  Great  War  revolutionized 
our  customs  and  restricted  the  amazing  Hberty  of  ac- 
tion which  we  had  enjoyed,  it  was  as  easy  for  any  one 
who  had  the  price  of  a  ticket  in  his  pocket  to  leave 
the  United  States  as  it  was  for  him  to  leave  his  own 
dwelling.  To-day — by  which  I  mean  the  summer  of 
19 19 — it  is  about  as  easy  for  an  American  to  leave 
the  United  States  as  it  is  for  a  convict  to  leave  Sing 
Sing.  This  condition  of  affairs,  so  unfamiliar  to  Amer- 
icans, is  due  to  the  barrier  which  has  been  thrown 
around  these  shores  by  rigid  enforcement  of  the 
passport  regulations  of  the  Department  of  State  in 
co-operation  with  the  Passport  Section  of  Military 
Intelligence.  Prior  to  the  passport  regulations  of 
September,  1918,  no  law  of  this  country  required  an 
American  travelling  abroad  to  have  a  passport.  In 
fact,  the  only  countries  where  passports  were  needed 
were  Russia  and  Turkey.    But  upon  the  breaking  of 


"M.  I."  405 

the  war-cloud  in  the  summer  of  19 14,  passports  were 
required  everywhere,  and  the  person  who  could  not 
produce  one  upon  demand,  immediately  became  an 
object  of  suspicion  and  investigation.  Under  the  regu- 
lations now  in  force,  the  Department  of  State,  by  its 
authority  to  exercise  discretion  in  the  issuance  of  pass- 
ports, is  in  a  position  to  control  travel.  And,  thanks 
to  the  facilities  of  M  I  1 1  for  investigating  the  loyalty 
and  character  of  applicants,  the  department  is  able  to 
form  a  remarkably  accurate  opinion  as  to  whether  the 
applications  it  receives  should  be  refused  or  granted. 

It  must  be  perfectly  obvious  that,  had  the  old 
system  of  non-interference  with  travel  been  permitted 
to  continue,  German  agents  could  easily  have  come 
to  the  United  States  through  neutral  countries,  gath- 
ered such  information  as  they  required,  and  departed 
as  they  came.  When  war  was  declared  on  April  6, 
191 7,  it  was  not  necessary  for  Congress  to  pass  a  law 
restricting  travel  by  alien  enemies,  for  the  law  was 
already  in  existence,  having  been  framed  in  1798,  at 
a  time  when  France  was  our  enemy  instead  of  our 
ally,  and  handed  down  to  us  by  the  Fathers.  As  a 
result  of  the  authority  conferred  by  this  forgotten 
statute,  the  German  agent  who  counted  on  the  law's 
delay,  habeas  corpus  proceedings,  and  a  long-drawn- 
out  trial  by  jury,  received  the  surprise  of  his  life,  for 
he  found  himself  seized  by  a  long,  swift  arm  which, 
waiting  for  neither  indictment  nor  trial,  placed  him 
where  he  could  do  no  further  mischief. 

The  seaman  presented  perhaps  the  most  perplex- 
ing problem  in  the  control  of  travel.    He  rarely  remains 


4o6      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

on  the  same  vessel  for  more  than  a  few  voyages  and 
he  seldom  has  a  real  home  where  his  antecedents 
can  be  looked  up.  Moreover,  under  the  Seaman's 
Act,  he  is  permitted,  if  not,  indeed,  encouraged,  to 
desert  in  an  American  port  in  order  to  be  re-engaged 
at  the  higher  American  rates  of  pay.  So  long  as  sea- 
men from  neutral  countries,  particularly  those  ad- 
jacent to  Germany,  could  come  ashore  at  will  in  Amer- 
ican ports,  no  really  effective  control  was  possible. 
So,  following  the  example  of  England  and  the  advice 
of  our  mihtary  attaches  in  the  countries  of  northern 
Europe,  an  order  was  issued  by  the  Secretary  of  State 
— though  not  until  seventeen  days  before  the  signing 
of  the  Armistice — forbidding  seamen  from  neutral 
countries  to  leave  their  ships  while  in  American  ports. 
The  presence  of  naval  guards  on  the  vessels  insured 
the  enforcement  of  the  order,  which  was  withdrawn, 
however,  shortly  after  the  signing  of  the  Armistice. 

By  an  arrangement  with  the  State  Department, 
all  passport  applications,  both  from  citizens  and  ahens, 
are  referred  to  M  I  ii  for  investigation.  The  files 
of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  now  contain  a 
vast  amount  of  information,  much  of  it  of  a  very  de- 
tailed character,  concerning  persons  and  business  firms 
in  the  United  States  and  foreign  countries.  By  re- 
ferring to  these  files,  therefore,  or  by  directing  its 
agents  to  make  special  investigations,  it  is  an  easy 
matter  for  the  Passport  Section  to  decide  whether  the 
applicant  is  the  sort  of  a  person  to  whom  a  passport 
should  be  granted.  The  passenger-list  of  every  vessel 
bound  for  an  American  port  is  cabled  to  the  Passport 


"M.  L"  407 

Section  by  the  American  consul  upon  the  departure 
of  the  vessel  from  the  last  port  of  call.  These  lists 
are  checked  in  the  suspect  files  of  the  Military  Intel- 
ligence Division,  and  if  there  is  found  anything  which 
makes  a  passenger  objectionable  or  suspicious,  the 
intelligence  officer  at  the  port  where  the  ship  will  ar- 
rive is  promptly  notified,  whereupon  the  passenger  in 
question  is  either  denied  entry  to  the  United  States 
or  placed  under  arrest,  according  to  his  nationality 
and  other  circumstances.  A  somewhat  similar  system 
of  control  is  in  operation  along  the  Mexican  and  Cana- 
dian borders,  the  immigration  and  intelligence  officers 
who  are  stationed  in  the  towns  along  the  interna- 
tional boundaries  making  it  difficult,  though  by  no 
means  impossible,  for  undesirables  to  enter  or  leave 
the  countr}\  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  Passport 
Section,  aided  by  a  small  army  of  military  attaches, 
consuls,  customs  officials,  immigration  officers,  secret 
agents,  and  intelligence  police,  has  succeeded  in  estab- 
lishing a  highly  effective  control  of  travel,  thus  pre- 
venting the  entry  or  departure  of  persons  whose  ex- 
pressions or  actions  might  prove  detrimental  to  the 
interests  of  the  United  States. 

Military  control  of  travel  is,  of  course,  a  war- 
time measure,  and  with  the  passing  of  the  emergency 
which  gave  it  birth  it  will  almost  certainly  disappear, 
along  with  most  of  the  other  activities  of  Mihtary 
Intelligence.  Though  I  am  heartily  in  favor  of  com- 
pletely restoring  the  country  to  a  peace-time  basis, 
and  of  abolishing  the  many  highly  arbitrary  measures 
made  necessary  by  the  war,  it  seems  to  me  that  it 


4o8      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

might  be  a  good  idea  to  continue  some  form  of  travel 
control  which  would  prevent  the  entry  into  the  United 
States  of  undesirable  aliens.  We  have  quite  enough 
of  them  as  it  is. 


VIII 
"TREAT   'EM  ROUGH!" 

IT  is  rather  a  curious  circumstance  that  the  idea 
from  which  was  evolved  one  of  the  most  formidable 
weapons  of  the  war,  and  one  which  proved  a  prime 
factor  in  bringing  Germany  to  her  knees,  was  obtained 
by  an  Englishman  in  Germany,  from  under  the  very 
noses  of  the  Germans  themselves,  who  did  not  have 
the  vision  to  recognize  its  amazing  military  possibili- 
ties. About  a  year  before  the  Teutonic  wave  surged 
across  the  frontiers  of  France,  the  representative  of 
a  California  manufacturing  concern  was  giving  demon- 
strations in  the  larger  German  cities  of  a  singular  device 
known  as  the  Holt  caterpillar  tractor.  Though  this 
contrivance,  in  spite  of  its  grotesque  and  clumsy  ap- 
pearance, could  cross  ditches  and  surmount  obstacles 
with  amazing  agility,  it  did  not  arouse  particular  in- 
terest am.ong  the  Germans,  for  it  was  intended  for 
the  pursuits  of  peace,  whereas  they  were  even  then 
seeking  new  means  for  making  war.  But  it  chanced 
that  among  the  onlookers  at  one  of  the  demonstrations 
was  an  English  traveller,  who  had  the  imagination  to 
see  in  the  clumsy  machine,  as  it  waddled  across  an 
apparently  impassable  terrain  with  the  relentlessness 
of  fate,  something  more  than  an  agricultural  appliance. 
Upon  his  return  to  England  he  described  the  tractor 

to  Colonel  E.  D.  Swinton,  who  evinced  the  liveHest 

409 


4IO      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

interest  in  the  subject,  closely  examining  the  pictures 
and  asking  countless  questions,  I  might  add  that 
General  Swinton,  for  he  has  since  been  promoted,  has, 
unlike  most  professional  soldiers,  a  highly  developed 
imagination,  as  is  shown  in  the  stories  he  has  written, 
the  best  known  of  which  is  entitled  The  Green 
Curve.  Colonel  Swinton,  who  had  served  in  the 
South  African  campaign,  had  long  had  in  mind  an 
idea  for  an  armored  fighting-machine,  a  sort  of  small 
fort  on  wheels,  which  could  be  propelled  by  its  own 
power  over  ground  impassable  to  any  other  type  of 
vehicle.  The  caterpillar  tractor  gave  him  the  means 
of  propulsion  which  he  had  been  seeking.  But,  as 
might  have  been  expected,  the  hidebound,  brassbound 
officials  of  the  War  Office  condemned  the  suggestion 
as  fantastic  and  impractical,  it  not  being  until  191 5, 
when  the  gloom  of  despondency  overhung  the  land 
and  people  snatched  at  straws  of  hope,  that  Swinton 's 
plans  were  taken  from  their  pigeonhole  for  reconsidera- 
tion and  he  was  reluctantly  given  permission  to  show 
what  he  could  do.  Upon  caterpillar  tractors  brought 
from  America  he  proceeded  to  mount  armored  hulls 
built  according  to  his  own  designs,  the  land  battle- 
ships thus  created  being  armed  with  both  field  and 
machine  guns.  They  were  tested  under  conditions  of 
the  greatest  secrecy,  the  trials  proving  so  successful 
that  the  construction  of  a  considerable  number  was 
immediately  authorized.  In  order  that  the  public 
might  obtain  no  hint  of  the  true  nature  or  purpose 
of  these  terrible  new  weapons  they  were  referred  to 
as  "tanks,"  the  impression  being  given  that  they  were 


"TREAT   'EM   ROUGH!"  411 

intended  for  transporting  water.  Painted  in  dull  colors 
and  swathed  in  tarpaulins,  fifty  tanks  were  landed  at 
Le  Havre  on  August  29,  19 16,  and  were  moved  up  to 
the  Somme  front  under  cover  of  darkness.  At  dawn 
on  September  15,  everything  being  in  readiness  for 
the  launching  of  the  great  Somme  drive,  they  were 
entered  in  battle  on  a  most  astonished  foe. 

Though  I  saw  one  of  the  tanks  in  action  on  this 
occasion — it  was  named,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  ^^Creme 
de  Menthe'^ — I  was  not  permitted  to  photograph  it  or 
to  ™te  about  it.  It  has  repeatedly  been  asserted 
that  these  tanks  were  the  first  vehicles  of  their  kind 
in  the  history  of  warfare,  and  that  is  true,  so  far  as 
the  method  used  for  their  propulsion  is  concerned,  yet 
it  is  interesting  to  note  that,  ten  years  before  the  Great 
Navigator  set  foot  on  the  beach  of  San  Salvador,  Leo- 
nardo da  Vinci  had  written  as  follows  to  the  Duke  Lu- 
dovico  Sforza:  "I  am  also  building  secure  and  covered 
chariots  which  are  invulnerable,  and  when  they  ad- 
vance with  their  guns  into  the  midst  of  the  foe,  even 
the  largest  army  masses  must  retreat,  and  behind 
them  infantry  may  follow  in  safety  and  without  op- 
position." 

Everything  considered,  the  tanks  were  not  of 
much  assistance  to  the  infantry  on  the  occasion  of 
their  first  appearance,  though  they  unquestionably 
caused  considerable  consternation  in  the  German  fines. 
Owing  to  delay  in  production,  the  British  were  obliged 
to  employ  at  the  battle  of  Arras,  on  April  9,  191 7,  tanks 
identical  with  those  which  had  been  used  on  the  Somme 
and  which  were,  in  reality,  fit  only  for  training  pur- 


412      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

poses,  having  only  8-mm.  armor.  Nevertheless,  two 
battalions  were  launched  on  a  two-kilometre  front, 
and  there  is  no  doubt  that  they  rendered  valuable 
service,  the  capture  by  twelve  tanks  of  a  German 
stronghold  known  as  ''The  Harp"  being  a  particularly 
noteworthy  achievement.  Eighty-eight  tanks  of  an 
improved  model,  protected  with  12-mm.  armor,  were 
used  in  the  attack  on  Messines  Ridge,  June  7,  191 7, 
but  the  success  of  the  infantry  was  so  complete  on 
that  occasion  that  the  tanks  had  only  an  unimportant 
role  to  play.  The  torrential  rains  which  fell  during 
the  early  stages  of  the  Ypres  offensive  on  July  31 
turned  the  battle-field  into  a  broad  and  treacherous 
morass,  in  which  tanks  were  of  but  little  use.  The 
following  figures,  which  were  doubtless  as  well  known 
to  Hindenburg  as  to  Haig,  explain  why  the  tanks  did 
not  sweep  everything  before  them,  as  it  was  confidently 
expected  that  they  would  do,  and  why  the  Germans 
were  no  longer  particularly  alarmed  by  their  appear- 
ance: 


Battle  of 

Tanks  in 
action 

Ditched 

Hit  by  shells 

First  day's  fighting. . 

r  Arras 
•j  Messines 
I  Ypres 

60 

88 

^33 

33  (55%) 

7  (19%) 

60  (45%) 

7    (2%) 

4    (5%) 

37  (28%) 

It  was  my  understanding  at  the  time  that  the 
use  of  tanks  by  the  British  during  the  fighting  on  the 
Somme  caused  great  annoyance  to  the  French  High 
Command,  it  being  asserted  that  the  British  had  agreed 
not  to  make  use  of  their  machines  until  the  tanks  which 
the  French  had  under  construction  were  ready,  when 


"TREAT   'EM   ROUGH!"  413 

both  armies  would  make  a  combined  tank  attack  on 
a  large  scale.  How  much  foundation  there  was  for 
this  assertion  I  do  not  know,  but  perhaps  it  was  as 
well  that  the  British  tanks  made  their  debut  when 
they  did,  for  the  French  did  not  make  use  of  tanks 
until  April  16,  191 7,  when  132  Schneider  tanks  at- 
tacked between  Rheims  and  the  Aisne.  "In  spite 
of  the  congratulations  of  the  commander-in-chief," 
reads  a  French  report,  "the  results  did  not  meet  ex- 
pectations, although  wherever  tanks  were  used  they 
led  the  infantry  beyond  the  advance  of  the  rest  of 
the  front  of  attack." 

It  would  seem  that  it  was  not  until  the  British 
victory  at  Cambrai,  when  430  tanks  were  used  to  lead 
a  large  attack,  in  the  course  of  which  8,000  prisoners 
and  100  guns  were  taken,  that  the  German  High  Com- 
mand realized  that  the  use  of  tanks  could  no  longer 
be  postponed,  for  shortly  thereafter  the  German  Tank 
Corps  was  formed,  an  Antitank  School  of  Instruction 
was  established,  and  orders  were  placed  for  a  large 
number  of  antitank  rifles.  The  Germans  experienced 
numerous  manufacturing  difficulties,  however,  in  the 
construction  of  their  tanks,  and  when  Marshal  Hinden- 
burg  inspected  the  first  fifteen  panzerkraftwagetis,  as 
they  were  called,  at  Charleroi,  in  March,  1918,  he 
damned  them  with  the  faint  praise:  "They  probably 
won't  be  of  much  use,  but  since  they  are  made  we 
might  as  well  employ  them."  This  discouraging  send- 
off  apparently  had  its  effect,  for  the  original  of  the 
Eljriede  t>'pe — Eljriedc  herself — was  ditched  and  cap- 
tured near  Villers-Brettoneux  a  few  weeks  later.     By 


414      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

contriving  to  unite  in  this  one  model  all  the  faults  of 
the  British  and  French  tanks,  the  Germans  once  again 
proved  the  truth  of  the  old  saying:  "Success  has  many 
imitators,  but  sometimes  they  copy  only  her  defects." 
According  to  a  German  deserter,  the  German  Tank 
Corps- in  July,  1918,  consisted  of  25  German  tanks  and 
50  repaired  British  machines.  This  same  authority 
stated  that  250  Hght  tanks  had  been  ordered  for  de- 
livery in  September,  1918,  and  that  in  April  construc- 
tion had  been  begun  on  a  monster  38  feet  long, 
weighing  no  tons,  carrying  four  77-mm.  cannon  and 
13  machine-guns.  This  formidable  war-engine,  called  a 
" Fahrharer  Sefechtsunter stand :  ver  dunden  niit  Artil- 
lerie  unt  Infanterie  Beebachttmg,''  boasted  contrivances 
for  creating  artificial  mists  (probably  similar  to  our 
owTi  smoke-producing  devices),  for  laying  and  covering 
its  own  telephone-wires  en  route,  was  equipped  with 
wireless,  and  carried  a  crew  of  an  officer  and  twenty- 
eight  men.  If  this  supertank  was  ever  constructed, 
it  certainly  never  went  into  action. 

The  Germans  were  more  successful,  however, 
when  it  came  to  devising  protective  measures  against 
tank  attacks.  These  consisted  of  trenches  of  peculiar 
construction  and  design,  some  of  them  from  15  to  20 
feet  wide  and  6  to  8  feet  in  depth;  "tank  traps,"  con- 
sisting of  deep  pits  with  camouflaged  covers;  bridges 
so  built  as  not  to  support  a  tank's  weight;  mine-fields; 
special  tank  observation-posts;  Tank  Goschutz  Batter ie, 
as  the  Germans  called  their  groups  of  77-mm.  antitank 
cannon;  55-mm.  tank  batteries,  which  were  kept  in 
pits  about  a  thousand  metres  from  the  front  line  and 


"TREAT  'EM   ROUGH!"  415 

were  only  brought  up  when  tanks  were  signalled; 
trench  mortars  mounted  for  horizontal  fire;  machine- 
guns  firing  armor-piercing  bullets;  hand-grenades 
with  concentrated  charges,  and  antitank  rifles.  The 
antitank  rifle  was  a  single-shot  Mauser,  mounted  on 
a  bipod,  weighing  32  pounds  and  firing  an  armor-pierc- 
ing ball  of  1 3 -mm.  caliber.  At  close  range  this  weapon 
penetrated  the  British  heavy  and  the  French  light 
tanks.  Had  it  been  used  in  groups  it  might  well  have 
proved  extremely  formidable,  but  the  unpopularity 
it  enjoyed  because  of  its  heavy  recoil  combined  with 
a  well-founded  reluctance  on  the  part  of  its  users  to 
await  the  near  approach  of  a  tank,  in  a  large  measure 
neutrahzed  its  effectiveness.  Toward  the  close  of  the 
struggle  it  seems  to  have  fallen  into  general  disuse, 
and  when  the  Armistice  was  signed  the  enemy  was 
preparing  to  supplant  it  with  a  22-mm.  machine-gun, 
a  few  of  which  had  already  been  used  with  consider- 
able success. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  in  April, 
191 7,  the  value  of  the  tank  as  a  weapon  of  offense  had 
been  so  thoroughly  estabhshed  that  steps  were  imme- 
diately taken  to  form  a  tank  organization  of  our  own, 
a  special  regiment — the  65th  Engineers — being  raised 
for  the  purpose.  The  units  of  this  regiment  were  re- 
cruited at  Camp  Upton,  New  York;  Camp  Devens, 
Massachusetts;  Camp  INIeade,  Mar}'land;  Camp  Lee, 
Virginia,  and  Camp  Cody,  New  Mexico,  the  entire 
regiment  being  assembled  in  March,  191 8,  at  Camp 
Colt,  on  the  battle-field  of  Gettysburg,  which  then 


4i6      THE  ARIMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

became  the  general  concentration  and  preliminary 
training-camp  for  the  tank  organization.  The  tanks 
passed  from  the  control  of  the  Corps  of  Engineers  on 
March  6,  191 8,  when  the  Secretary  of  War  directed 
the  organization  of  the  Tank  Corps  as  a  separate  arm 
of  the  service,  Lieutenant-Colonel  Ira  C.  Welborn,  a 
regular  infantry  officer,  being  commissioned  as  colonel 
and  appointed  director  of  the  Tank  Corps  in  the  United 
States. 

The  structural  organization  of  the  corps,  as  it 
existed  at  the  close  of  the  war,  consisted  of  General 
Tank  Headquarters,  with  15  officers  and  60  men;  Army 
Tank  Headquarters  (one  for  each  field  army),  with 
7  officers  and  27  men;  Brigade  Headquarters,  4  officers 
and  47  men;  a  Heavy  Battalion,  with  a  strength  of 
68  officers  and  778  men;  a  Light  Battalion,  consisting 
of  20  officers  and  375  men;  a  repair  and  salvage  com- 
pany, 4  officers  and  146  men;  a  Depot  Company,  4 
officers  and  138  men.  To  each  Army  Tank  Head- 
quarters were  assigned  5  brigades,  each  brigade  being 
composed  of  3  battalions,  i  heavy  and  2  light,  and  i 
repair  and  salvage  company.  A  battalion  consists  of 
three  companies,  each  company  having  three  platoons. 
As  five  fighting-tanks  are  assigned  to  each  platoon,  it 
will  thus  be  seen  that  a  field  army  has  675  tanks  at 
its  disposal. 

The  commissioned  and  enlisted  personnel  of  the 
Tank  Corps  was  of  as  high  an  average,  both  mentally 
and  physically,  as  any  organization  in  the  army,  not 
even  excepting  the  Air  Service.  About  65  per  cent 
of  the  corps  were  technically  trained  men — engineers 


"TREAT  'EM  ROUGH!"  417 

and  machinists — while  the  remaining  35  per  cent  was 
composed  of  business  and  professional  men,  farmers, 
cow-punchers,  college  undergraduates,  and  soldiers  of 
fortune.  They  came  from  every  section  of  ever>'  State 
in  the  Union.  Their  versatility  was  denoted  by  the 
pipings  of  their  overseas  caps — blue,  red,  and  yellow — 
which  denoted  that  they  combined  the  functions  of 
infantry,  artillery,  and  cavalry.  Several  other  colors 
might  appropriately  have  been  added,  however,  for 
the  tank  men  were  as  familiar  with  Browning,  Le-wis, 
and  Vickers  as  the  machine-gunners,  they  knew  as 
much  about  gas-engines  as  the  Motor  Transport  Corps, 
they  were  as  competent  to  make  repairs  as  the  men 
of  the  Ordnance  Department,  and  in  action  they  took 
as  many  risks  as  the  youngsters  on  whose  breasts  were 
embroidered  the  silver  wings.  They  were  as  keen  as 
razors  and  as  hard  as  nails.  They  were,  to  use  the 
phraseology  of  the  plains,  fairly  "rarin'  to  go,"  and 
they  were  ready  and  anxious  to  fight  at  the  drop  of 
the  hat.  In  fact,  that  was  why  they  joined  the  Tank 
Corps — because  they  believed  it  offered  more  oppor- 
tunities for  Boche-killing  than  any  other  branch  of 
the  service. 

The  training  of  the  tank  units  was  based  on  in- 
fantry drill,  which  is  the  best  means  of  instilling  dis- 
cipline. This  was  supplemented,  however,  by  instruc- 
tion in  the  use  of  machine-guns  and  tank  cannon  and 
in  the  operation  and  maintenance  of  gas-engines,  the 
men  finally  being  brought  to  a  point  where  they  were 
ready  to  take  up  technical  and  tactical  tank  training 
at  the  British  and  French  tank-training  centres,  to 


4i8      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

which  they  were  sent  as  soon  as  there  was  accommoda- 
tion for  them.  Thousands  of  men,  trained  to  the  limit 
of  the  facilities  in  this  country,  were  held  at  Gettys- 
burg from  April  and  May  until  August  and  September 
because  of  the  shortage  of  tanks  and  the  lack  of  train- 
ing facilities  in  France.  Not  until  September,  in  fact, 
did  any  tanks  become  available  for  training  purposes 
in  the  United  States,  when  there  arrived  five  British 
heav}^  tanks  and  several  light  tanks  of  American  manu- 
facture, thus  permitting  training  to  be  resumed  on  a 
larger  scale.  When  the  Armistice  was  signed,  the  Tank 
Corps  had  a  total  of  20,212  officers  and  men,  of  whom 
8,183  were  serving  in  Europe.  Shortly  before  the  col- 
lapse of  Germany  preparations  had  been  begun  for  the 
great  Allied  drive  planned  for  the  spring  of  1919,  steps 
being  taken  to  increase  the  corps  to  a  point  where  it 
could  supply  tank  units  for  four  field  armies.  The  pro- 
posed strength  for  this  purpose  was  57,940  officers  and 
men,  it  being  planned  to  have  this  entire  force  fully 
organized,  trained,  equipped,  and  in  France  by  the 
early  spring  of  19 19. 

The  programme  of  tank  construction  for  the 
American  Army  was  initiated  in  February,  1918,  but, 
owing  to  the  extensive  arrangements  which  had  to  be 
made  with  numerous  manufacturers  for  the  enormous 
number  of  parts  required,  and  to  the  fact  that  there 
existed  in  the  United  States  Httle  or  no  accurate  data 
regarding  tank  construction,  the  first  light  tank  was 
not  delivered  to  the  Tank  Corps  in  the  United  States 
until  the  following  September.  Owing  to  the  more 
complicated  mechanism  of  the  heavy  tanks,  none  of 


THE  AMKRICAX  WHIPPET  TANK. 


THE    MAKk    \     1  A.\k. 


Photograph  by  Signal  Corps.  U.  S.  A. 

A  SQUADRON"  OF  WHIPPET  TAXKS  ADVANCING  IN  BATTLE  FORMATION, 


^holograph  by  Signal  Corps.  U.  S.  A. 

A  SQUADRON  OF   WHIPPET  TAXKS  PARKED    AND   CAMOUFLAOED    TO  CONCEAL 
THEM  FROM  ENEMY  OBSERVATION. 


"TREAT   'EM   ROUGH!"  419 

them  was  completed  before  the  signing  of  the  Armis- 
tice. The  machines  used  by  the  American  Tank  Corps 
units  engaged  on  the  Western  Front  were  supphed 
by  the  French  and  British,  no  American-built  tanks 
being  employed  in  active  fighting  during  the  war. 

After  a  series  of  conferences  between  American, 
French,  and  British  tank  officers,  it  was  decided  that 
two  types  of  tanks  should  be  manufactured  in  the 
United  States:  a  heavy  mode  l(Mark  VIII)  and  a  light 
machine  (Mark  I)  known  as  a  "whippet."  The  heavy 
tank,  which  weighs  thirty-five  tons  and  carries  a  crew 
of  one  officer  and  nine  men,  is  armed  with  two  six- 
pounder  rapid-fire  guns  and  six  Browning  machine- 
guns,  and  is  capable  of  a  speed  of  from  four  and  one-half 
to  six  miles  an  hour  over  ordinary  ground.  The  whip- 
pet, named  after  a  breed  of  small  dog  used  in  England 
f  >T  racing,  was  an  adaption  of  the  French  Renault  tank, 
weighs  six  tons  and  carries  a  crew  of  two  men — a 
driver  and  a  gunner — and  over  ordinary'  ground  can 
move  at  a  speed  of  from  seven  to  eight  miles  an  hour. 
These,  then,  were  the  two  types  of  tanks  originally 
decided  upon,  but,  as  will  be  seen,  the  programme 
was  considerably  altered. 

When  it  was  decided  that  the  United  States  should 
embark  on  a  programme  of  tank  construction,  the 
Ordnance  Department  had  only  the  haziest  instruc- 
tions to  guide  it.  Owing  to  the  mystery  in  which  the 
French  and  British  enshrouded  the  details  of  their 
tank  construction,  all  that  our  Ordnance  officers  knew 
about  a  tank  was  that  it  should  be  able  to  cross 
trenches  at  least  six  feet  wide,  that  it  should  be  pro- 


420      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

tected  with  armor-plate  approximately  five-eighths  of 
an  inch  thick,  and  that  it  should  carry  one  heavy  gun 
and  two  or  three  machine-guns.  Two  experimental 
machines  were  laid  down  and  work  started  on  them 
at  once,  these  models  being  intended  to  develop  the 
possibilities  of  the  gas,  electric,  and  steam  systems  of 
propulsion  as  well  as  to  ascertain  the  relative  advan- 
tages of  very  large  wheels  and  a  specially  articulated 
form  of  caterpillar  tread. 

At  this  time  the  British  were  using  and  were  in- 
terested in  a  large  tank  only.  The  French  had  been 
using  a  medium-sized  tank,  known  as  the  Schneider, 
but,  as  it  had  not  been  wholly  successful,  they  had 
developed  a  much  smaller  two-man  machine,  called 
the  Renault,  which  presented  some  very  decided  ad- 
vantages and  which  they  eventually  adopted  as  their 
only  type.  While  the  large  British  tank  had  been 
reasonably  successful  in  operation,  it  had  certain  very 
decided  limitations  which  the  British  themselves  recog- 
nized, so,  after  a  thorough  investigation  of  its  possibili- 
ties and  shortcomings,  it  was  decided  to  redesign  the 
large  tank  rather  than  to  copy  the  existing  model  with 
its  admitted  defects.  It  was  furthermore  decided  that 
the  work  of  designing  should  be  done  jointly  by  Brit- 
ish and  American  engineers,  acting  under  the  Anglo- 
American  agreement  drawn  up  as  the  result  of  a 
conference  at  British  General  Headquarters,  which 
provided  for  the  joint  production  by  England  and  the 
United  States  of  1,500  large  tanks,  England  to  furnish 
the  hulls,  guns,  and  ammunition,  the  United  States 
to  provide  the  power-plant  and  driving  mechanism. 


"TREAT   'EM   ROUGH!"  421 

When  the  Armistice  was  signed,  approximately  50  per 
cent  of  the  work  represented  by  the  American  com- 
ponents had  been  completed,  and  it  was  confidently 
expected  that  the  entire  programme  of  1,500  would 
have  been  completed  by  March.  England  had  about 
250  of  the  hulls  ready  when  the  Armistice  was  signed. 

The  work  of  manufacturing  the  French  type  of 
tank  had  not  progressed  satisfactorily,  however,  this 
being  partly  due  to  the  delay  involved  in  changing 
all  drawings  from  the  metric  system  to  the  American, 
and  to  the  difficulty  which  was  experienced  in  induc- 
ing American  concerns  to  take  on  the  production  of 
this  machine,  which  is  extremely  complicated  and 
difficult  to  manufacture.  It  was  necessary,  there- 
fore, to  divide  up  manufacturing  activities  on  this 
tank  between  a  considerable  number  of  plants.  The 
original  programme  called  for  4,440  of  these  small 
tanks,  of  which  209  had  been  completed  by  the  end 
of  December,  1918,  with  289  more  partly  completed 
and  production  just  getting  under  way.  There  was 
every  reason  to  believe  that  the  entire  number  would 
have  been  ready  for  use  by  April,  191 9. 

During  the  last  summer  of  the  war  two  new  types 
of  tank  were  developed.  One  of  these  was  a  tw^o-man, 
three-ton  affair,  which  the  P'ord  Motor  Company 
guaranteed  to  produce  at  the  rate  of  one  hundred  a 
day.  Orders  were  placed  with  that  concern  for  15,000 
of  these  ''flivvers"  and  the  first  500  machines  would 
have  been  ready  for  delivery  on  January  i,  but  upon 
the   signing   of   the   Armistice   their  production   was 


42  2       THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

stopped.  The  other  machine  was  a  successor  to  the 
French  Renauh,  but  designed  with  a  view  to  quan- 
tity production.  It  carried  three  men  instead  of  two 
and  was  armed  with  both  a  37-mm.  cannon  and  a  ma- 
chine-gun, whereas  the  Renault  carried  only  two  men 
and  one  weapon.  The  cost  of  production  would  have 
been  very  much  less  than  the  Renault  machine  and 
the  weight  substantially  the  same.  One  thousand  of 
these  had  already  been  ordered  and  negotiations  were 
pending  for  a  second  thousand — the  first  to  be  delivered 
in  January  and  the  entire  two  thousand  by  the  end 
of  March. 

In  addition  to  the  above  activities,  the  Ordnance 
Department  had  decided  to  build  1,450  of  the  large 
Mark  VIII  tanks,  including  hull,  guns,  and  ammuni- 
tion, entirely  in  this  country.  In  fact,  work  on  the 
interior  components  for  this  lot  of  machines  was  well 
under  way  when  the  Armistice  was  signed. 

It  was  perhaps  as  weU  for  the  Germans  that  they 
contracted  yellow  fever  when  they  did,  for  had  the 
war  continued  long  enough  to  permit  of  America 
launching  the  avalanche  of  tanks  which  she  had  under 
construction,  the  Huns  certainly  would  have  had  heart- 
failure.  I  doubt,  indeed,  if  any  Americans,  save  the 
handful  of  officers  directly  concerned,  realize  how 
tremendous  was  our  tank  programme.  When  the 
war  ended,  orders  had  actually  been  placed  for  23,390 
tanks,  representing  an  outlay  of  approximately  $175,- 
000,000.  This  vast  fleet  of  tanks  was  to  be  manned 
by  some  58,000  men — as  many  as  there  were  in  the 
entire  American  Army  prior  to  the  war  with  Spain. 


"TREAT   'P:M   ROUGH!"  423 

Had  these  tanks  been  placed  side  to  side  they  would  have 
fonned  a  moving  wall  of  steel  forty  miles  long.  Even 
the  comparatively  few  Tank  Corps  units  which  had 
an  opportunity  to  get  into  action  gave  the  enemy  a 
taste  of  what  we  were  preparing  for  him.  Their  crest 
was  an  angry  cat.  Their  motto  was  "Treat  'Em 
Rough!"    And  they  did. 


I 


IX 

"GET  THERE!" 

IT  may  be  said,  without  taking  undue  liberties  with 
the  truth,  that  the  newest  branch  of  the  American 
Army,  the  Motor  Transport  Corps,  owes  its  existence 
to  a  Mexican  bandit  named  Francisco  Villa,  sometimes 
called  "Pancho"  for  short.  You  may  have  heard  of 
him.  Though  the  officers  who  wear  on  their  collars  the 
insignia  of  the  wheel  and  the  winged  helmet  will  proba- 
bly disagree  with  this  statement,  asserting  that  their 
corps  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  Great  War,  it  is,  neverthe- 
less, a  fact  that  the  present  huge  organization,  which 
controls  all  the  motor-driven  transport  of  the  American 
Army,  had  its  beginning  in  the  handful  of  trucks,  barely 
a  score  in  all,  which  ploughed  their  way  across  the  sands 
of  Chihuahua  in  the  wake  of  Pershing'-s  little  punitive 
column. 

When  Villa  and  his  raiders  swooped  down  upon 
the  border  settlement  of  Columbus  on  the  night  of 
March  8,  1916,  there  was  not  a  single  organized  motor- 
truck unit  in  the  army,  our  officers,  most  of  them 
trained  in  the  schools  of  Indian  and  Filipino  warfare, 
insisting  that  no  motor-driven  vehicle  was  as  sturdy  and 
dependable  as  the  old-time  escort  wagon  and  its  four- 
mule  team.  The  refusal  of  our  staff  authorities  to 
recognize  the  advantages  of  motor  transport  is  the  more 
difficult  to  understand  when  it  is  remembered  that  for 

close  on  four  years  there  had  been  unfolding  before  our 

424 


"GET  THERE!"  425 

eyes  the  countless  object-lessons  of  civil  life  and  of  the 
war  in  Europe,  every  highway  from  the  North  Sea  to 
the  Alps  being  crowded  with  the  motor-driven  vehicles 
of  the  fighting  armies. 

The  present  Motor  Transport  Corps  may  be  said 
to  have  been  born  when,  three  days  after  the  Colum- 
bus raid,  General  Funston,  in  command  of  the  South- 
ern Department,  telegraphed  to  Washington  for  au- 
thorization to  form  a  number  of  motor-truck  companies 
for  service  with  the  punitive  expedition.  The  War  De- 
partment acted  promptly.  The  request  was  immedi- 
ately approved,  and  within  three  days  twenty-four 
trucks  had  been  purchased,  a  force  of  civilian  drivers 
had  been  recruited,  and  the  entire  outfit  loaded  aboard 
special  trains.  As  soon  as  the  trains  reached  Columbus 
the  trucks  were  loaded  with  supplies  and  sent  across  the 
border  to  overtake  the  expedition,  which  was  already 
well  into  northern  Mexico.  Notwithstanding  the  total 
absence  of  anything  resembling  roads,  despite  the  deep 
sand,  the  extreme  heat,  and  the  inexperience  of  the 
drivers,  the  trucks  caught  up  with  the  column  before 
the  supplies  which  it  had  taken  from  the  United  States 
were  exhausted.  From  that  moment  the  value  of 
motor-driven  vehicles  for  military'  purposes  was  firmh- 
established  in  the  minds  of  American  officers,  even  the 
most  hidebound  old  Indian  fighters,  who  disapproved 
of  everything  new  on  principle,  being  compelled  to  ad- 
mit that  the  mule  must  give  way  to  the  motor. 

The  first  two  motor-truck  units  proved  so  ex- 
tremely efficient  that  the  organization  of  others  was 
begun,  and  by  June  30  there  had  been  formed  fifteen 


426      THE   ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

companies  in  all.  The  personnel  of  these  early  motor- 
transport  companies  was  civilian,  the  drivers  and  re- 
pair men  being  provided  by  the  factories  which  sup- 
plied the  trucks,  but  it  quickly  became  apparent  that 
the  employment  of  civilians  would  not  prove  satis- 
factor}^  because  of  their  lack  of  discipline  and  the  con- 
sequent difficulty  of  keeping  them  under  control, 
the  officers  not  knowing  how  to  handle  civilians. 
So,  whenever  possible,  enlisted  men  who  had  had 
experience  with  motor  vehicles  or  who  possessed  some 
mechanical  aptitude  were  transferred  to  the  truck 
companies  to  replace  the  civilians,  the  latter  remaining 
on  to  give  instruction  in  driving  and  maintenance. 
Maintenance  is,  I  might  add,  perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant factor  in  the  successful  operation  of  motor 
vehicles,  for  broken-down  cars  must  be  repaired,  worn 
parts  must  be  replaced,  and  the  vehicles  must  fre- 
quently be  overhauled.  In  order  to  maintain  in  a  state 
of  efficiency  the  truck  trains  operating  in  Mexico,  it 
was  found  necessary,  therefore,  to  build  repair-shops 
and  to  organize  repair  crews.  Though  the  personnel 
of  these  shops,  like  the  drivers,  was  at  first  largely 
civilian,  it,  too,  was  gradually  replaced  by  enlisted 
men,  so  it  may  be  said  that  by  the  opening  of  191 7 
motor  transportation  had  become  a  recognized  branch 
of  the  military  establishment,  although  it  was  not  until 
some  time  after  declaration  of  war  that  it  was  author- 
ized for  the  army. 

Although,  upon  our  entry  into  the  European  war, 
preparations  were  immediately  begun  for  the  com- 
plete motorization  of  the  various  trains — ammunition, 


"GET  THERE!"  427 

engineer,  sanitar>',  and  supply — which  comprise  the 
divisional  trains,  each  of  these  sections  was  still  con- 
trolled by  the  corps  or  department  to  which  it  per- 
tained. In  other  words,  the  ammunition  trains  were 
controlled  by  the  Ordnance  Department  so  far  as  the 
procurement  of  vehicles  and  the  supply  of  personnel 
was  concerned ;  the  engineer  trains  were  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  Corps  of  Engineers;  the  sanitary  trains  were 
under  the  Medical  Corps,  and  only  the  supply  trains 
came  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Quartermaster  Corps. 
It  must  be  understood,  however,  that  the  divisional 
trains  were  assigned  to  and  became  a  part  of  the  divi- 
sion itself,  being,  therefore,  under  the  direct  command 
of  the  divisional  commander.  As  might  have  been  ex- 
pected, this  system  resulted  in  inefficiency  and  confusion 
because  of  municipal  officers  in  control.  Instead  of  all 
motor  activities  being  directed  by  a  single  head,  each 
of  the  staff  departments  using  motor  vehicles  had  its 
own  ideas  and  worked  along  its  own  lines.  Thus,  the 
Corps  of  Engineers  had  designed  and  was  manufactur- 
ing various  t>'pes  of  vehicles  adapted  to  engineering 
work.  The  Signal  Corps  was  producing  vehicles  de- 
signed for  carrying  radio  equipment,  photographic 
laboratories,  and  the  like.  The  Medical  Corps  was 
experimenting  with  various  types  of  ambulances,  dental 
wagons,  and  mobile  laboratories,  while  the  Ordnance 
Department  was  dividing  its  allegiance  between  the 
tractor  type  and  the  model  known  as  the  "Quad" 
or  four-wheel  drive.  Thus  it  was  that  for  many  months 
after  the  declaration  of  war  the  motor  activities  of  the 
army  were  distributed  among  several  arms  of  the  ser- 


428      THE  ARIMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

vice,  wdth  the  inefficiency  and  duplication  of  effort  which 
invariably  results  from  decentralization. 

The  necessity  for  a  separate  organization  to  han- 
dle motor  transportation  was  first  recognized  by  the  A. 
E.  F.,  and  in  December,  191 7,  General  Pershing  issued 
a  general  order  creating  a  IVIotor  Transport  Service. 
The  new  service  was  described  as  a  part  of  the  Quarter- 
master Corps,  and  an  assistant  to  the  Chief  Quarter- 
master was  detailed  as  its  chief.  For  all  practical  pur- 
poses, however,  it  became  a  separate  organization. 
In  the  United  States  the  transition  was  more  gradual, 
it  not  being  until  August,  1918,  that  the  Secretary  of 
War  authorized  the  creation  of  a  Motor  Transport 
Corps  as  a  separate  and  distinct  branch  of  the  military 
establishment.  Colonel  Charles  B.  Drake,  who  was  later 
made  a  brigadier-general,  being  named  as  its  first  chief. 
The  new  organization  was  built  up  along  the  same  lines 
as  the  Motor  Transport  Service,  the  officers  and  men 
of  the  latter  being  transferred  to  similar  positions  in  the 
new  corps,  thus  enabling  them  to  continue  the  per- 
formance of  their  duties  without  interruption  or  con- 
fusion. The  effect  was  as  though  the  Motor  Transport 
Service  was  lifted  bodily  out  of  the  Quartermaster 
Corps,  renamed,  and  made  completely  independent, 
the  only  visible  sign  of  the  change  being,  however, 
that  the  officers  and  men  changed  their  Quartermaster 
insignia  for  the  winged  helmet  superimposed  upon  a 
motor-wheel  which  was  adopted  as  the  device  of  the 
new  corps. 

Under  the  new  order  all  the  motor  transportation 
of  the  army,  save  only  tractors  used  for  artiller}^  pur- 


"GET  THERE!"  429 

poses,  was  embraced  in  ihe  Motor  Transport  Corps. 
The  Medical  Corps,  the  Engineer  Corps,  the  Quarter- 
master Corps,  the  Signal  Corps,  and  the  Department  of 
MiHtary  Aeronautics,  all  of  which  had  developed  special 
t>T)es  of  vehicles  for  their  respective  needs,  imme- 
diately turned  over  their  equipment  to  the  new  or- 
ganization. The  designing  of  bodies  was  left  to  the 
several  branches,  but  the  designing  of  all  types  of 
chassis  was  included  in  the  functions  of  the  ]\Iotor 
Transport  Corps.  Among  the  duties  of  the  new  corps 
were  the  design,  procurement,  storage,  maintenance, 
and  replacement  of  all  motor  vehicles,  though  a  few 
weeks  later  procurement  was  assigned  to  the  Purchase, 
Storage,  and  Traffic  Division  of  the  office  of  the 
Quartermaster-General,  with  the  proviso,  however, 
that  the  Motor  Transport  Corps  should  prescribe  the 
type  and  design  of  the  vehicles  supplied  to  it.  The 
corps  was  thus  enabled  to  insist  that  it  be  supplied 
only  with  the  standardized  military  truck,  the  design 
of  which  had  been  achieved  by  the  Motor  Transport 
Service  in  spite  of  much  opposition  and  after  untiring 
effort.  This  arrangement  also  effectually  prevented 
the  purchase  and  use  of  vehicles  of  many  different  de- 
signs and  put  an  end  to  the  complicated  and  extrava- 
gant system  of  spare  parts  and  supplies  inseparable 
from  the  use  of  a  multiplicity  of  t>pes. 

I  might  mention,  in  passing,  that  in  the  spring  of 
191 7,  just  prior  to  our  entry  into  the  war,  the  auto- 
motive engineers  of  the  United  States  met  in  Washing- 
ton and,  putting  aside  all  thought  of  commercial 
rivalry  or  profit,  or,  indeed,  of  ever}lhing  save  patriot- 


430      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

ism,  designed  a  motor- truck  which  combined  the  best 
features  of  the  many  trucks  which  were  then  being  man- 
ufactured, placing  at  the  disposal  of  the  government  de- 
signs and  patents  that  were  the  result  of  heavy  ex- 
penditures of  time,  money,  and  talent.  This  work  of 
standardization  was  in  charge  of  Mr.  Christian  Girl, 
who  was  probably  better  fitted  for  the  task  than  any 
man  in  the  United  States.  The  result  was  a  standard- 
ized military  motor-truck  which  is  generally  admitted 
to  be  the  most  efficient  vehicle  of  its  kind  in  existence. 

The  efficiency  of  any  motor-transport  service,  no 
matter  how  well  equipped  with  vehicles,  must  depend 
primarily  upon  the  efficiency  of  its  personnel.  The 
finest  truck  that  mechanical  genius  can  design  and 
money  can  buy  can  be  ruined  in  a  few  hours  by  the 
carelessness  or  ignorance  of  its  driver.  It  was  quickly 
realized,  therefore,  that,  if  the  Motor  Transport  Corps 
was  to  give  efficient  service,  its  officers  and  men  must 
be  as  carefully  trained  as  their  fellows  in  the  combatant 
branches  of  the  army.  The  first  real  training-school 
for  Motor  Transport  officers  was  established  by  General 
Pershing  in  France,  its  students  being  recruited  mainly 
from  Americans  who  had  gone  overseas  prior  to  our 
entry  into  the  war  and  had  entered  the  French  service 
as  camion  and  ambulance  drivers.  These  men  pos- 
sessed much  practical  knowledge,  gained  in  actual 
warfare,  and  a  large  percentage  of  them  were  given 
commissions  in  the  Motor  Transport  Service  of  the  A. 
E.  F.  The  chief  training-centre  in  the  United  States 
was  at  Camp  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  on  the  St.  John's 
River,  near  Jacksonville,  Fla.,  and  a  smaller  one  was 


"GET  THERE!"  431 

later  organized  at  Camp  Meigs,  in  the  District  of  Co- 
lumbia. Using  as  a  basis  of  instruction  the  curriculum 
adopted  by  the  A.  E.  F.,  the  officers  and  men  at  these 
camps  were  given  a  very  thorough  course  of  training  in 
all  phases  of  motor-transport  work,  including  road- 
training,  tactics,  maintenance  and  repair  of  cars,  and 
a  certain  amount  of  infantry  drill  in  order  to  inculcate 
discipline.  But  with  the  growth  of  the  army  increased 
training  facilities  became  imperative,  it  being  estimated 
that  between  20,000  and  30,000  men  per  month  would 
be  required  by  the  Motor  Transport  Corps.  In  fact, 
requirements  from  overseas  for  men  for  operations  up 
to  July  I,  1919,  was  placed  at  upward  of  231,000  officers 
and  men.  In  order  to  train  these  men  and  organize 
them  into  the  proposed  units,  it  was  planned  to 
establish  motor-transport  training-centres  at  Camp 
Bowie,  Texas;  Fort  Sheridan,  Illinois;  Camp  Fremont, 
California;  Camp  Wheeler,  Georgia,  and  Camp  Taylor, 
Kentucky,  which,  in  conjunction  with  the  schools 
already  in  operation  at  Camp  Joseph  E.  Johnston  and 
Camp  Meigs,  and  other  schools  which  had  been  estab- 
lished by  the  Committee  of  Education  and  Special 
Training,  would  have  given  a  total  monthly  training 
capacity  of  23,800  men.  The  signing  of  the  Armistice 
put  an  abrupt  end  to  this  enormous  training  programme, 
but  plans  have  already  been  perfected  for  the  formation 
of  a  Motor  Transport  Reserve  Corps,  which,  it  is  be- 
lieved, will  result  in  providing  a  large  number  of  officers 
trained  in  motor-transport  duties  and  ready  for  imme- 
diate service  in  the  event  that  the  United  States  should 
again  go  to  war. 


432      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

About  SLx  weeks  before  the  signing  of  the  Ar- 
mistice a  spectacular  campaign  was  inaugurated  in  or- 
der to  obtain  for  the  corps  recruits  possessing  the  neces- 
sary technical  and  mechanical  training.  Officers  and 
civilians  were  sent  to  the  principal  cities  in  the  United 
States  to  open  recruiting  offices,  though  no  funds  were 
appropriated  for  office  rent,  clerical  hire,  supplies,  or 
advertising,  each  recruiting  officer  being  expected  to 
exercise  his  ingenuity  in  procuring  all  of  the  above 
without  cost  to  the  government.  But  thanks  to  the 
co-operation  and  assistance  rendered  by  the  local  Cham- 
bers of  Commerce  and  Boards  of  Trade,  and  to  the  pa- 
triotism of  the  automobile  manufacturers  and  news- 
papers, the  campaign  proved,  in  spite  of  the  lack  of 
funds,  a  remarkable  success,  there  being  received  more 
than  50,000  applications  for  enlistment. 

Shortly  after  the  beginning  of  hostilities  steps 
were  taken  toward  the  establishment  of  three  great 
motor- transport  centres :  Camp  Holabird,  about  twenty 
miles  from  Baltimore,  on  the  shores  of  Chesapeake  Bay; 
Camp  Jessup,  at  Atlanta,  Ga.,  and  Camp  Normoyle. 
The  huge  assembly  and  repair  shops  erected  at  these 
camps  are  perhaps  the  most  complete  plants  of  their 
kind  in  existence,  being  of  permanent  construction 
and  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  army  for  many  years 
to  come.  At  each  of  these  camps  storage  facilities 
have  been  provided  for  the  vast  number  of  motor  ve- 
hicles which  will  not  be  required  under  peace  condi- 
tions, but  which  will  be  kept  in  constant  readiness  for 
use  in  an  emergency.  Practically  all  motor  vehicles 
destined  for  service  overseas  passed  through   Camp 


"GET  THERE!"  433 

Holabird,  where  they  were  uncrated,  assembled,  put 
in  thorough  running  order,  inspected,  registered,  and 
finally  loaded  aboard  ship  for  transport  to  France. 
During  the  last  summer  of  the  war,  when  the  shipment 
of  motor  vehicles  was  at  its  height,  Camp  Holabird 
was  worth  journeying  a  considerable  ways  to  see,  there 
being  literally  acres  of  vehicles,  ranging  all  the  way 
from  huge  artillery  repair  trucks,  veritable  machine- 
shops  on  wheels,  to  "flivvers"  which  unsuccessfully 
attempted  to  conceal  their  identity  beneath  coats  of 
olive-drab.  The  paint-shops  were,  incidentally,  one  of 
the  most  interesting  features  of  the  camps,  the  paint 
being  sprayed  on  the  vehicles  by  means  of  air-brushes 
and  a  hose  in  little  more  time  than  it  takes  to  tell  about 
it.  Thanks  to  this  ingenious  method,  it  did  not  take 
very  much  longer  to  paint  a  motor  car  or  a  truck  than 
it  does  to  polish  a  pair  of  shoes.  Then  there  were  the 
trimming-shops,  where  tops,  curtains,  boots,  and  cush- 
ions were  turned  out  by  the  thousand;  the  supply 
depots,  whose  huge  steel  and  concrete  buildings  were 
stacked  to  the  ceilings  with  incredible  quantities  of 
tires,  tubes,  lamps,  and  other  accessories;  the  repair- 
shops,  with  their  forges,  lathes,  and  travelling  cranes; 
and  the  spare-parts  department,  where,  thanks  to  a 
remarkably  ingenious  card-index  system,  there  could  be 
obtained  without  confusion  or  delay  any  duplicate 
part  that  might  be  called  for,  whether  it  was  a  new  rear 
axle  for  a  mobile  repair-shop  or  a  tiny  cotter-pin  for 
a  motorcycle.  Though  these  great  shops  had  been  in 
operation  only  a  few  months  when  the  war  ended,  and 
though  their  personnel  had  been  obtained  an^-where, 


434      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE   ARMY 

everywhere,  almost  at  a  moment's  notice,  they  were 
probably,  everything  considered,  the  best  organized 
and  most  efficient  plants  of  their  kind  in  the  world. 

The  Motor  Transport  Corps  naturally  resolves  it- 
self into  two  main  branches:  Park  Service  and  Field 
Service.  The  first  of  these  branches  is  subdivided,  in 
turn,  into  four  general  types  of  parks:  Reception,  Or- 
ganization, Replacement,  and  Repair.  The  Reception 
Park  was  usually  established  at,  or  near,  a  base  port 
for  the  purpose  of  receiving  motor  vehicles  for  ship- 
ment abroad.  Here  the  vehicles  were  uncrated,  as- 
sembled, registered,  and  put  in  running  condition. 
This  done,  the  vehicle  was  sent  on  to  an  Organization 
Park,  where  vehicles  and  men  first  met,  the  latter 
coming  from  one  of  the  Motor  Transport  Corps  schools; 
here  the  various  units  were  organized,  and  the  per- 
sonnel and  material  held  in  readiness  for  assignment. 
The  function  of  a  Replacement  Park  is,  as  its  name 
signifies,  to  fill  any  deficiencies  in  equipment  or  per- 
sonnel. Though  this  scheme  of  organization  was  quite 
generally  adhered  to  in  the  A.  E.  F.,  each  camp  in  the 
United  States  devoted  to  motor-transport  activities 
may  be  said  to  have  combined  the  functions  of  Recep- 
tion, Organization,  and  Replacement  Parks  under  a 
single  head. 

The  present  organization  of  the  Field  Service  units 
of  the  Motor  Transport  Corps  is  as  follows:  the  per- 
sonnel of  a  motor-transport  company  consists  of  a 
first  lieutenant,  a  second  lieutenant,  eight  sergeants, 
forty-four  privates  (ten  first-class),  and  two  cooks; 
the  equipment  consists  of  a  light  open  motor-car,  a 


Photograph  by  ^ii^iid  Corps.  L  .  S.  .1. 

MOBILE  MACHIXE-SIIOP  UI'KRATIXG  IX  A  \  ILLAGE  UNDER  SHELL  EIRE. 


/      ^    .1. 

SUPPLY  OF  MOTOR  TIRES. 


''GET  THERE!"  435 

motorcycle  with  side-car,  twenty-nine  cargo  trucks, 
including  one  for  light  repair  and  one  for  company 
supply,  two  tank  trucks,  and  a  rolling  kitchen.  A 
motorcycle  company  has  a  first  lieutenant,  a  second 
lieutenant,  six  sergeants,  a  corporal,  thirty  privates, 
first-class,  and  a  cook,  together  with  thirty- two  motor- 
cycles with  side-cars,  and  two  cargo  trucks.  A  head- 
quarters motor  command  is  in  charge  of  a  captain,  who 
has  two  first  lieutenants,  a  second  lieutenant,  five  ser- 
geants, four  corporals,  and  two  privates,  first-class; 
the  rolling-stock  includes  two  heavy  motor-cars,  two 
light  closed  cars,  one  light  open  car,  one  cargo  truck, 
and  two  motorcycles  with  side-cars.  Though  there 
are  no  tables  of  organization  for  the  larger  units  of  the 
Motor  Transport  Corps,  a  Supply  Train  is  composed 
of  a  headquarters  motor  command  and  not  less  than 
two  or  more  than  six  motor-transport  companies. 

So  much  space  has  been  devoted  in  the  newspapers 
and  magazines  to  the  ex-ploits  of  the  combatant  arms 
of  the  service  that  the  public  has  heard  little,  if  any- 
thing, of  the  less  spectacular  but  no  less  arduous  and 
important  work  of  the  men  who  wore  the  purple  hat- 
cords  of  the  M.  T.  C. 

It  was  their  endurance  and  resourcefulness  which 
made  possible  the  transfer  by  road  to  the  St.  Mihiel 
and  Argonne  sectors,  in  nineteen  days,  of  more  than 
half  a  million  men,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  unprece- 
dented congestion  as  a  result  of  the  preparations  in 
progress  for  the  great  offensives.  It  was  the  tireless, 
iron-hard  drivers  of  the  M.  T.  C.  who  got  forward  the 
food  for  the  men  and  the  food  for  the  guns.     It  was 


436      THE  ARIMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

the  despatch-riders  of  the  corps  who,  jeering  at  death, 
delivered  the  vital  messages  which  were  intrusted  to 
them,  tearing  down  the  steel-swept,  shell-pocked  roads 
at  express- train  speed  on  their  roaring  motorcycles. 
No  mud  was  too  deep,  no  shell-storm  too  violent,  no 
road  too  dangerous  to  stop  the  men  of  the  M.  T.  C. 
They  went  wherever  their  wheels  could  find  traction — 
and  in  some  places  where  they  could  not.  They  did 
not  possess  so  much  as  a  bowing  acquaintance  with 
either  fatigue  or  fear.  They  were  the  newest  corps  in 
the  army  and  they  made  their  own  traditions.  They 
were  as  unconventional  in  their  methods  of  doing  things 
as  the  old-time  army  teamster,  the  stage-coach  driver, 
and  the  pony-express  rider,  whose  qualities  they  have 
inherited  and  whose  lineal  descendants  they  are. 
When  in  doubt  they  stepped  on  the  accelerator,  for  the 
motto  of  the  Motor  Transport  Corps  is  "Get  There  .^" 


X 

MENDERS  OF   MEN 

BENEATH  the  crest  of  the  British  Royal  Artillery 
appears  the  word  "  Ubique^' — "Everywhere."  It 
is  a  motto  which  might  more  fittingly  be  applied  to  the 
Medical  Department  of  our  own  army,  however,  for 
that  corps  has  its  representatives  in  every  branch  of 
the  service — on  land,  afloat,  and  in  the  air.  It  di- 
rected the  designing  and  production  of  our  first  gas- 
masks and  from  it  was  drawn  the  nucleus  of  our  orig- 
inal Gas  Defense  Service.  It  provided  the  medical 
staffs  for  the  hospital  ships  and  for  the  army  trans- 
ports. By  means  of  the  ingenious  system  of  tests 
which  it  devised,  it  selected  our  flying-men,  determined 
on  the  form  of  aviation  work  for  which  they  were 
mentally  and  physically  fitted,  and,  by  a  system  of 
unceasing  observation,  kept  them  constantly  in  condi- 
tion to  fight  the  Boche  in  the  skies.  It  organized  an 
ambulance  service  which  won  the  admiration  of  the 
world.  No  battery  or  battalion  went  into  action 
without  its  quota  of  medical  officers,  who  shared  all  the 
perils  and  privations  of  their  comrades  of  the  line  and 
worked  longer.  Only  two  units  in  the  American  Army 
were  granted  by  the  French  the  coveted  distinction  of 
wearing  the  fourragere:  one  of  them  was  an  Air  Ser- 
vice squadron,  the  other  a  unit  of  the  Sanitary  Corps 
of  the  Army  Medical  Department.  Our  medical  offi- 
cers were  actually  the  first  in  the  field  and  the  first  to 

437 


438      THE  ARJNIY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

sustain  wounds;    the  first  American  killed  after  the 
declaration  of  war  was  a  medical  officer. 

A  Kst  of  the  Medical  Department's  activities  would 
include  the  Dental  Corps,  the  Sanitary  Corps,  the 
Veterinary  Corps,  the  Nurse  Corps;  laboratories  for 
the  study  and  prevention  of  infectious  diseases;  or- 
ganizations for  the  isolation  and  the  special  care  of  the 
tuberculous,  the  insane,  the  victims  of  war  neuroses; 
convalescent  centres  and  sanatoria;  a  division  of 
psychology  for  gauging  the  mental  capabilities  of  the 
army's  enlisted  personnel;  a  division  of  physical  re- 
construction for  the  rehabilitation  of  the  sick  and 
wounded;  a  hospital  division  which  planned  and 
equipped  hospitals  to  meet  the  constantly  increasing 
needs  of  the  army;  a  motion-picture  industry  which 
enabled  the  staffs  of  the  various  hospitals  to  see  de- 
picted on  a  screen  the  latest  methods  of  surgery  and 
medicine  and  which  also  illustrated  to  the  soldier 
the  danger  of  breaking  sanitary  regulations;  the  pub- 
lication of  a  chain  of  hospital  papers  to  strengthen  the 
morale  of  the  soldier  patients;  a  system,  working  in  co- 
operation with  the  War  Risk  Insurance  Bureau  and  the 
Adjutant-General's  Office,  designed  to  expedite  the 
settlement  of  war  claims,  and  a  remarkable  statistical 
classification  of  the  sick  and  wounded,  including 
a  complete  medical  history  of  each  individual  case. 
To  this  array  of  extraordinary  activities  must  be  added, 
of  course,  the  features  usual  to  any  well-organized  med- 
ical department:  services  of  internal  medicine  and 
surgery  working  in  the  closest  harmony  in  every  hos- 
pital unit;  divisions  of  head  surgery  (including  eye,  ear, 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  439 

nose,  and  throat),  orthopedics,  urology,  and  Roent- 
genology; and  finally  that  vast  organization  for  the 
care  of  the  wounded  whose  operations  began  with  the 
stretcher-bearers  out  in  No  Man's  Land  and  ended  only 
when  the  men  had  passed  out  of  the  great  general  hos- 
pitals in  the  homeland  with  the  wound-chevrons  on 
their  sleeves. 

When,  in  the  past,  we  have  been  suddenly  con- 
fronted by  the  necessity  of  making  war,  we  have  had 
to  do  our  organizing  after  the  beginning  of  hostilities. 
And,  though  the  titanic  conflict  had  been  in  progress  for 
more  than  two  years  and  a  half  before  we  entered  it, 
we  ran  true  to  form,  being  as  unprepared  for  war  from 
a  medical  standpoint  as  we  were  from  an  ordnance, 
an  artillery,  or  an  aviation,  point  of  view.  Barring 
the  superficial  experience  gained  by  some  of  our  medical 
ofiicers  during  the  mobilization  on  the  Mexican  border, 
our  medical  preparations  were  all  made  after  war  had 
been  declared.  This  unpreparedness  was  not  the  fault 
of  the  heads  of  the  Medical  Department,  mind  you; 
it  was  not  due  to  carelessness  or  lack  of  foresight,  but 
was,  instead,  the  logical  result  of  a  deliberate  policy 
of  those  who  held  that  to  be  prepared  for  war  was  to  in- 
vite war.  When  the  war-cloud  broke,  it  became  neces- 
sary, therefore,  to  build  overnight,  and  virtually  from 
the  ground  up,  a  mammoth  and  highly  complex  or- 
ganization. When  war  was  declared,  the  Medical  De- 
partment, including  the  Medical  Corps,  the  Dental 
Corps,  the  Veterinary  Corps,  and  their  respective 
reserves,  had  barely  700  commissioned  officers  on  duty 
in  the  United  States  and  its  possessions.    Though  the 


440      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

regular  Medical  Corps  included  many  officers  whose 
achievements  had  contributed  very  largely  to  the 
prevention  of  disease  and  the  amelioration  of  suffering 
in  all  parts  of  the  world — it  has  been  said  of  former 
Surgeon-General  Gorgas  that  he  ''made  the  Canal 
possible  and  the  tropics  habitable" — and  though  these 
officers  were  skilled  in  preventive  medicine,  field  sanita- 
tion, and  other  phases  of  the  work  of  the  army  surgeon, 
there  was,  after  all,  only  a  handful  of  them.  It  became 
necessary,  therefore,  to  provide,  on  the  instant,  not  only 
for  an  enormously  augmented  personnel  but  also  for  new 
and  unconsidered  conditions.  An  ambulance  service 
had  to  be  organized  and  vehicles  for  it  had  to  be  de- 
signed and  manufactured;  hospital  trains  had  to  be 
built — there  was  only  one  in  the  United  States  when  the 
war  began ;  antiseptic  methods  in  field  surgery  had  to 
be  devised  as  a  substitute  for  the  complete  surgical 
cleanliness  possible  only  under  peace  conditions;  a 
system  had  to  be  devised  and  put  in  operation  which 
would  insure  the  prompt  collection  of  the  wounded  on 
the  battle-field  and  their  rapid  evacuation;  measures 
had  to  be  taken  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  severely 
wounded  and  their  training  for  future  efficiency  in  civil 
life. 

Beginning,  as  I  have  already  said,  with  a  peace- 
time personnel  of  barely  700  officers,  and  a  peace-time 
organization,  the  Medical  Department  expanded  as  the 
army  expanded,  until,  when  the  Armistice  was  signed,  it 
was  serving  4,000,000  American  soldiers  at  home  and 
overseas  and  had,  in  addition,  spread  its  safeguards 
over  millions  more  of  the  civil  population  on  both  sides 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  441 

of  the  Atlantic.  Several  years  prior  to  the  war  there 
had  been  organized  a  Medical  Reserve  Corps  which  in- 
cluded in  its  membership  many  prominent  physicians 
and  surgeons.  The  National  Guards  of  the  several 
States  also  had  their  respective  medical  organizations. 
The  Medical  Department  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war 
consisted,  therefore,  of  nine  corps :  the  Medical  Corps, 
the  Medical  Reserve  Corps,  the  Medical  Corps  of  the 
National  Guard,  the  Dental  CorjDs,  the  Dental  Reserve 
Corps,  the  Dental  Corps  of  the  National  Guard,  the 
Veterinary  Corps,  the  Veterinary  Reserv^e  Corps,  and 
the  Veterinary  Corps  of  the  National  Guard,  to  which 
were  added  before  the  war  had  been  in  progress  a  month 
a  Medical  Corps,  National  Army,  a  Veterinary  Corps, 
National  Army,  a  Sanitary  Corps,  and  an  Ambulance 
Corps,  making  a  total  of  thirteen  distinct  ser^'ices  in 
the  Medical  Department.  By  the  act  of  August  7, 
191 7,  however,  all  of  the  above  were  merged  into  the 
Medical  Corps,  United  States  Army,  thereby  greatly 
simplifying  administration.  But  it  was  quickly  real- 
ized that,  even  by  calling  to  the  colors  ever}'  medical 
officer  in  the  Reserve  Corps  and  the  National  Guard,  the 
personnel  would  still  fall  far  short  of  the  number  re- 
quired to  provide  for  the  proper  care  and  treatment  of 
the  enormous  armies  which  were  rapidly  being  placed 
in  the  field,  for  already  the  Secretary  of  War  had  made 
his  celebrated  remark:  "Why  stop  with  an  army  of 
5,000,000  men?"  Some  conception  of  the  problem 
confronting  the  surgeon-general  may  be  had  when  I 
explain  that  the  Medical  Department  was  expected  to 
furnish  each  infantry  division  with  approximately  iii 


442      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

officers  and  1,400  enlisted  men.  In  addition,  an  enor- 
mous number  of  medical  officers  was  required  for  the 
camp,  base,  and  general  hospitals  which  were  springing 
up  like  mushrooms,  almost  in  a  night,  throughout  the 
land.  In  order  to  obtain  these  officers  it  became  neces- 
sary, therefore,  to  appeal  to  the  medical  profession  of 
the  United  States  and  to  the  various  medical  societies, 
the  American  Medical  Association  taking  a  particularly 
energetic  and  enthusiastic  part  in  the  work  of  recruiting. 
The  response  of  the  medical  men  of  America  was  as 
prompt  as  it  was  gratifying.  Speciahsts  whose  names 
were  as  familiar  to  the  public  as  those  of  Cabinet  officers 
and  who  for  a  single  operation  received  fees  equal  to 
the  annual  salary  of  an  ambassador;  obscure  country 
practitioners  who  made  their  daily  rounds  in  mud- 
bespattered  buggies  and  who,  as  often  as  not,  received 
their  pay — when  they  received  it  at  all — in  produce; 
prosperous  middle-aged  physicians  with  estabhshed 
and  lucrative  city  practices;  struggling  young  internes; 
lecturers  on  medicine  and  surgery  at  universities  and 
colleges,  put  aside  their  private  affairs  and  offered 
their  services  to  the  nation.  So  universal  was  the  re- 
sponse, indeed,  that  numerous  communities  found 
themselves  facing  the  prospect  of  being  wholly  without 
medical  attendance,  for  all  their  physicians  were  in  or 
were  trying  to  get  into  khaki. 

The  same  patriotic  enthusiasm  was  shown  by  the 
dental  profession.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  there 
were  only  86  dental  officers  in  the  Regular  Army,  this 
number  being  based  upon  the  ratio  of  one  dentist  to 
each  thousand  enlisted  men.     And,   though  the  im- 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  443 

portance  of  a  clean,  healthy  mouth  was  fully  recognized 
as  being  essential  in  maintaining  the  health  of  the  in- 
dividual soldier,  no  Dental  Reserve  Corps  existed  at 
this  time.  It  was  evident  from  the  very  beginning, 
therefore,  that,  in  order  to  care  for  the  teeth  of  millions 
of  fighting-men,  it  would  be  necessary  to  strain  to  the 
very  limit  the  resources  of  the  dental  profession. 
Moreover,  before  the  war  had  been  in  progress  half  a 
year,  it  was  found  necessary  to  raise  the  authorized 
quota  of  one  dentist  to  every  thousand  men  to  one 
dentist  to  every  500  men.  But  the  dentists  lagged 
not  a  whit  behind  their  fellows  of  the  medical  profes- 
sion, so  that  when  Germany  threw  up  her  hands  and 
cried  "Kamerad!"  there  were  6,284  officers  in  the 
Dental  Corps. 

When  the  Secretary  of  State  intimated  to  the  Ger- 
man Ambassador  that  his  immediate  departure  for 
the  Fatherland  would  cause  no  tears,  there  were  barely 
400  members  of  the  Army  Nurse  Corps,  170  of  whom 
were  reserve  nurses,  having  been  called  into  active 
service  as  a  result  of  the  mobilization  on  the  border. 
Yet  when  the  war  ended,  the  corps  carried  on  its  rolls 
the  names  of  21,480  nurses,  nearly  half  of  whom  were 
serving  overseas.  As  long  as  a  veteran  of  the  Great 
War  lives,  the  work  of  these  young  women  will  be  re- 
ferred to  with  something  akin  to  reverence.  They  dis- 
played a  courage,  self-sacrifice,  and  devotion  beyond  all 
praise.  Among  them  were  capable,  experienced  execu- 
tives who  wore  on  the  breasts  of  their  trim  blue  jackets 
ribbons  showing  that  they  had  seen  previous  ser\'ice 
in  Cuba,  in  the  Philippines,  and  on  the  Mexican  border. 


444      THE  AR]\IY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Others,  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  them,  came  from 
the  hospitals  of  the  larger  cities.  But  by  far  the  greater 
number  of  them  were  graduate  nurses  who  left  assured 
and  lucrative  private  employment  for  the  fatigues,  the 
discomforts,  and  ofttimes  the  dangers,  of  army  work. 
Nurses  with  wide  executive  experience  were  brought 
into  the  service  as  chief  nurses  of  the  great  army  hos- 
pitals, some  of  which  had  from  300  to  600  nurses  on 
their  staffs  while  the  influenza  epidemic  was  at  its 
height.  Their  work  in  this  emergency  requires  no  com- 
ment, for  they  were  untiring  in  their  efforts,  taking  no 
heed  of  the  number  of  hours  they  worked  and  frequently 
staying  at  their  posts  until  they  dropped  from  exhaus- 
tion. During  the  epidemic  127  nurses  died  in  this 
country  and  35  overseas  from  influenza  or  pneumonia 
resulting  from  it.  Though  a  number  of  American 
nurses  have  been  decorated  by  foreign  governments,  our 
own  government  has  seen  fit  to  recognize  the  heroism  of 
only  four:  Miss  Beatrice  McDonald,  who  received  the 
D.  S.  C.  for  staying  by  her  patients  when  the  hospital 
in  which  she  was  on  duty  was  bombed  by  German  air- 
men, though  severely  wounded  herself,  Miss  Helen 
G.  McClelland,  Miss  Isabelle  Stambaugh,  and  Miss 
Julia  Stimson,  who  received  the  D.  S.  M. 

Meanwhile  the  enlisted  personnel  had  increased 
enormously.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  there  were  in 
the  Medical  Department  approximately  6,900  men. 
During  the  nineteen  months  of  hostihties  this  force 
steadily  expanded,  the  recruits  including  medical 
students,  pharmacists,  and  others  of  a  medical  turn 
of  mind.     Not  every  one  in  the  corps  had  had  experi- 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  445 

ence  in  medicine  or  kindred  subjects,  however;  the  chief 
orderly  at  the  hospital  in  which  I  was  in  France  had 
been  one  of  the  editors  of  Vanity  Fair,  another  had  been 
engaged  in  the  importing  business,  and  one  of  the  en- 
listed men  at  Fort  McHenry  Hospital,  Baltimore,  was 
a  motion-picture  actor  whose  features  are  known  to 
''movie"  fans  all  over  the  United  States.  The  Medical 
Corps  reached  its  maximum  strength  in  November, 
1 91 8,  when  its  records  showed  a  total  of  264,181  officers 
and  men.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  personnel  of 
the  Medical  Corps  alone  at  the  close  of  the  Great  War 
was  much  greater  than  that  of  the  entire  Regular  Army 
before  the  beginning  of  hostilities. 

The  Medical  Corps  naturally  divides  itself  into  two 
main  branches:  the  Division  of  Surgery  and  the  Divi- 
sion of  Internal  Medicine.  The  latter,  as  its  name 
indicates,  deals  almost  entirely  with  non-surgical 
diseases  and  conditions;  in  other  words,  medicine  as 
distinguished  from  the  knife.  One  of  the  principal 
functions  of  the  Division  of  Internal  Medicine  con- 
sisted in  obtaining,  training,  if  necessary,  and  assigning 
to  duty  in  the  various  hospitals  and  camps  expert 
examiners  in  diseases  of  the  heart  and  lungs,  these 
officers  being  charged  with  the  duty  of  determining  the 
fitness  of  recruits  for  military  service  and  their  con- 
dition on  discharge,  with  special  reference  to  heart 
disease  and  tuberculosis.  This  latter  phase  of  their 
work  assumed  such  important  proportions,  however, 
that  it  was  eventually  taken  over  by  a  separate  divi- 
sion. Another  function  of  the  division  was  to  obtain 
mature  and  highly  trained  internists  of  long  experience 


446      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

to  serve  as  Chiefs  of  Medical  Service  in  base  and 
general  hospitals,  these  officers,  who  included  many  of 
the  ablest  physicians  in  the  United  States,  being  re- 
sponsible for  the  professional  care  of  all  medical  pa- 
tients. For  a  time  a  school  was  maintained  to  train 
these  medical  chiefs,  practically  all  of  whom  were 
fresh  from  civil  practice,  in  the  details  of  army-hospital 
administration.  Younger  men,  usually  with  little  or 
no  hospital  experience  and,  therefore,  less  highly  quali- 
fied, were  assigned  to  serve  under  the  medical  chiefs 
as  ward  surgeons  in  direct  charge  of  sick  soldiers.  A 
small  number  of  highly  experienced  men  were  also 
brought  into  the  service  as  medical  consultants,  their 
duties  being  to  visit  the  various  hospitals  and  to  main- 
tain helpful  and  sympathetic  relations  between  the 
medical  staffs  and  the  surgeon-general  in  Washington. 
The  above  is,  of  course,  merely  a  hasty  sketch  of  the 
great  work  done  by  the  medical  internists.  The  vast 
majority  of  them  were  desperately  anxious  for  service 
in  France  and  moved  heaven  and  earth  to  obtain  over- 
seas assignments,  being  bitterly  disappointed  when  they 
found  that  the  needs  of  the  army  required  that  they 
should  remain  on  duty  in  the  homeland.  By  compari- 
son with  those  of  their  fellows  who  were  serving  within 
sound  and  often  within  range  of  the  guns,  domestic 
service  seemed  quiet  and  prosaic.  But,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  was  nothing  commonplace  about  it  at  any 
time.  The  nearest  approach  to  it  was  after  the  Armis- 
tice, when  the  main  impulse  and  motive  for  military 
service,  the  winning  of  the  war,  became  a  thing  of  the 
past.     But  during   the   continuance  of  the  war   the 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  447 

medical  officer,  whether  his  duties  kept  him  on  the  fir- 
ing-line itself,  in  the  camp  and  base  hospitals  in  the 
rear,  far  from  the  thunder  of  the  cannon,  or  at  the  can- 
tonments on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  never  had  reason 
to  complain  of  his  work  being  monotonous  or  uninter- 
esting, for  every  day,  almost  every  hour,  indeed, 
brought  new  experiences  and  new  problems.  I  doubt 
if  there  is  a  single  officer  who  wore  the  uniform  of  the 
Medical  Corps  who  will  not  willingly  admit  that  his 
army  work  better  fitted  him  for  civil  practice  and  af- 
forded him  a  deeper  understanding  of  the  needs  of 
suffering  humanity. 

The  great  and  crowded  days  of  the  medical  intern- 
ist in  the  United  States  came  with  the  influenza  epi- 
demic. Thrilling,  trying,  and  tragic  was  this  period. 
At  first  in  driblets,  then  in  streams  which  increased 
with  appalling  rapidity,  the  men  poured  into  the  hos- 
pitals. In  civil  life  a  hospital  with  250  beds  is  con- 
sidered a  very  considerable  institution  and  one  of  which 
the  community  it  serves  has  reason  to  boast,  yet  the 
great  base  hospitals,  sometimes  with  as  many  as  2,500 
beds,  were  literally  swamped  with  new  cases,  occasion- 
ally as  many  as  1,000  "flu"  patients  being  brought  in 
during  a  single  day.  These  men  had  to  be  cared  for 
and  carried  through.  But  how?  Not  only  were  there 
not  enough  hospitals  in  the  land  to  hold  them,  but  the 
medical  profession,  already  drained  of  its  practitioners 
by  the  demands  of  the  army  overseas,  was  unable  to 
find  enough,  or  nearly  enough,  physicians,  nurses,  and 
attendants,  for  the  influenza,  remember,  showed  no 
discrimination,  attacking  soldiers  and  civilians  alike. 


448      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

When  the  epidemic  descended  upon  the  cantonments, 
barracks  near  the  hospitals  were  taken  over  by  the 
medical  authorities,  the  well  men  being  evacuated  to 
tents  in  favor  of  the  sick.  In  many  instances  buildings 
which  did  not  have  a  stick  of  furniture  in  them  in  the 
morning  were  ready  to  receive  patients  by  mid-after- 
noon. In  the  meantime  cots,  pillows,  sheets,  and  blan- 
kets, three  or  four  to  each  cot,  had  been  moved  in. 
Medicines,  glasses,  and  all  the  other  paraphernalia 
of  modern  medicine  had  been  obtained.  Fires  had  been 
started.  Cooks,  stoves,  cooking  utensils,  food,  and 
dishes  appeared  as  at  the  wave  of  a  magician's  wand. 
Medical  officers  and  nurses  had  been  assigned  and  had 
reported  for  duty.  The  Red  Cross  and  other  war  ser- 
vice agencies  were  on  hand.  Arrangements  had  been 
made  to  care  for  the  clothing  and  valuables  of  the 
patients  and  a  hundred  other  details  had  received 
attention.  And  all  this,  mind  you,  in  a  few  short  hours. 
Surgical  officers  volunteered  for  medical  service.  Offi- 
cers from  the  training-camps  of  the  Medical  Corps  were 
sent  by  tens  and  twenties  to  help  out.  Every  city, 
town,  and  village  between  the  oceans  was  combed  for 
nurses.  There  were  not  enough  ambulances  to  trans- 
port the  sick,  so  private  motor-cars,  taxicabs,  even 
motor-trucks,  were  pressed  into  use.  The  drivers  sat 
at  their  steering-wheels  day  and  night  until  they  could 
no  longer  keep  their  eyes  open.  Medical  officers  were 
on  duty  from  daybreak  until  long  after  midnight,  day 
after  day,  week  after  week.  Nurses  and  orderlies  kept 
at  their  work  until  they  dropped  from  sheer  exhaustion. 
This  was  the  home  equivalent  of  battle  service.     No 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  449 

sterner,  no  more  gallant,  resistance  to  the  Hun  assaults 
was  ever  made  by  the  men  on  the  firing-line  in  France 
than  the  battle  which  was  waged  against  an  equally 
formidable,  equally  treacherous,  enemy  by  the  men 
and  women  who  wore  on  their  sleeves  the  silver  chevrons 
of  home  service. 

The  Division  of  Tuberculosis  is  one  of  the  four 
branches  of  the  Division  of  Internal  Medicine,  it  being 
the  only  division  that  has  to  do  with  a  single  disease. 
This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  tuberculosis  is  admitted  the 
world  over  to  be  the  most  prevalent  disease  known,  one 
out  of  every  seven  of  the  earth's  inhabitants  dying  from 
some  form  of  it.  In  order  to  detect  the  presence  and 
combat  the  spread  in  the  army  of  the  Great  White 
Plague,  the  Medical  Corps  very  early  in  the  war  took 
steps  to  standardize  the  chest  examinations  of  soldiers, 
all  recruits  being  examined  upon  their  arrival  at  the 
camps  according  to  the  standard  thus  devised  by  doc- 
tors who  were  specialists  in  tubercular  troubles.  These 
measures  resulted  in  excluding  from  the  army  about 
80,000  cases  of  active  tuberculosis.  Had  the  methods 
pursued  in  former  wars  been  adhered  to,  a  considerable 
proportion  of  these  would  undoubtedly  have  escaped 
detection,  and,  as  tuberculosis  is  a  highly  communica- 
ble disease,  thousands  of  perfectly  healthy  men  would 
have  become  infected.  Most  of  these  tubercular  cases 
would  have  had  their  disease  aggravated  by  field  ser- 
vice, and,  moreover,  the  resources  of  the  Medical  Corps 
would  have  been  heavily  taxed  had  it  been  called  upon 
to  treat  so  large  a  number  of  patients.  Soldiers  who 
were  suspected  of  having  tuberculosis,  or  who  developed 


450      THE   ARMY   BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

it  while  in  the  service,  were  examined  by  specialists, 
who  confirmed  or  rejected  the  original  diagnosis,  those 
who  were  found  to  have  the  disease  being  immediately 
sent  to  special  hospitals  or  sanatoria  for  treatment. 
The  location  of  these  sanatoria  in  such  recognized  and 
widely  scattered  health  resorts  as  Asheville,  North 
Carolina,  Denver,  Colorado,  the  Catskill  Mountains, 
Arizona,  and  New  Mexico  enabled  the  medical  authori- 
ties to  send  the  soldier  patients  to  regions  which,  as 
experience  has  taught,  promote  recovery  from  the  dis- 
ease, and  which  were  at  the  same  time  as  close  as  possi- 
ble to  their  homes.  Patients  sent  to  these  hospitals 
were  not  discharged  from  the  service  until  they  were 
cured  or  until  the  maximum  improvement  had  been 
obtained.  Thus  soldiers  received  treatment  which  few 
civilians  could  afford,  no  multimillionaire  being  able  to 
purchase  better  medical  attention  than  that  which 
Uncle  Sam  gave  his  boys.  As  tuberculosis  is  a  chronic 
disease,  and  as  a  certain  number  of  cases  will  relapse 
after  its  progress  has  apparently  been  arrested,  special 
efforts  were  made  to  teach  the  patients  how  to  live  in 
order  to  prevent  further  retrogression,  particular  em- 
phasis also  being  laid  on  the  necessity  of  observing  the 
sanitary  precautions  which  will  prevent  the  transmis- 
sion of  the  tubercular  germs  from  the  patient  to  the 
members  of  his  family. 

Though  for  a  number  of  years  prior  to  the  war  there 
had  been  a  steadily  increasing  appreciation  of  the  im- 
portance of  neurology  and  psychiatry  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  a  fighting-machine,  the  theories  which  had  been 
evolved  along  these  lines  were  never  put  into  practice, 


MExNDERS  OF  MEN  451 

at  least  on  a  large  scale,  until  America's  entry  into  the 
great  conflict,  when  there  was  organized  the  Neuro- 
psychiatric  Section  of  the  Division  of  Internal  Medi- 
cine. WTien  the  section  was  created,  about  fifty  neuro- 
psychiatric  officers  were  commissioned;  when  the 
Armistice  was  signed,  this  number  had  risen  to  nearly 
700.  The  chief  function  of  the  section  was  the  exclusion 
from  the  army,  by  means  of  special  tests,  of  men  who, 
because  of  mental  and  nervous  diseases,  were  consid- 
ered unfit  for  military  service.  At  first  this  section  was 
treated  with  open  derision  or  contemptuous  tolerance 
by  certain  of  the  narrow-minded  or  the  prejudiced — 
for  the  Medical  Corps,  like  all  other  branches  of  the 
army,  is  not  without  its  fogies  who  regard  with  suspicion 
anything  that  is  new.  The  best  proof  of  the  success  of 
its  work,  however,  is  the  fact  that  it  discovered  the 
presence  in  the  army,  at  home  and  overseas,  of  more 
than  72,000  men  suffering  from  nervous  and  mental 
disorders,  every  one  of  whom  was  a  potential  menace 
to  our  success  as  long  as  he  remained  in  active  service. 
Thanks  to  the  simple  but  highly  effective  tests  which 
the  psychiatrists  devised,  certain  men  were  discovered 
to  be  moral  perverts;  the  tests  showed  that  others,  if 
exposed  to  the  strain  of  battle,  probably  would  have 
suffered  mental  collapse,  and  that  still  others  did  not 
possess  a  sufficiently  developed  mentality  to  under- 
stand or  to  carry  out  orders.  Imagine  how  grave  a 
menace  a  single  pervert  might  have  proved  to  the 
morals  of  the  men  with  whom  he  was  associated  in  the 
intimacy  of  army  life.  Picture  the  danger  to  the  suc- 
cess of  a  military  operation  of  a  single  soldier  who  did 


452      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

not  possess  suiEcient  intelligence  to  understand  the 
orders  which  were  given  him  or  the  courage  to  carry 
them  out.  Such  men  were  of  far  greater  potential 
danger  to  the  welfare  of  the  army  than  were  those 
suffering  from  tuberculosis.  By  means  of  the  psychi- 
atric tests  given  at  the  camps  and  cantonments,  more 
than  I  per  cent  of  all  the  men  brought  into  the  army 
by  the  draft  were  discovered  to  be  mentally  unfit  and 
were  at  once  rejected.  On  the  other  hand,  many 
drafted  men  were  found  to  possess  exceptional  mental 
qualifications  and  were  thus  marked  out  for  assign- 
ments where  their  special  aptitudes  would  prove  of  the 
greatest  value,  in  many  cases  being  recommended  for 
the  officers'  training-camps.  This  was  the  first  war  in 
which  mental  tests  have  been  employed.  Men  with 
undeveloped  minds,  unstable  nervous  systems,  or  in- 
adequate self-control  are  very  bad  risks  for  armies. 
They  are  unknown  quantities  and  their  behavior  in 
moments  of  stress  cannot  be  relied  upon.  Such  men 
may  cause  disaster  in  action,  they  are  liable  to  shell- 
shock,  and  they  are  likely  to  swell  the  lists  of  pension 
claimants.  But  the  psychological  tests,  though  they 
did  not  entirely  eliminate  these  dangers,  certainly  re- 
duced them  to  a  minimum,  enabling  line-officers  to 
equalize  the  mental  strength  of  their  commands  by  the 
reassignment  or  transfer  of  men  to  less  exacting  duties, 
or,  in  the  case  of  those  who  were  actually  feeble-minded, 
securing  their  discharge  from  the  army  and  returning 
them  to  their  homes. 

To  the  Division  of  Laboratories  and  Infectious 
Diseases  were  assigned  the  duties  of  ascertaining  the 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  453 

causes  of  communicable  diseases  and  of  establishing 
methods  for  their  control.  The  immensely  important 
work  of  this  division  was  handled  by  five  sections,  as 
follows:  (i)  The  Section  of  Laboratories,  whose  duty 
it  was  to  furnish  and  train  personnel,  supervise  the  work 
of  the  laboratories,  and  standardize  the  equipment. 
(2)  The  Section  of  Epidemiology,  which  followed  the 
progress  of  disease  and  recommended  measures  of  con- 
trol. (3)  The  Section  of  Urology  and  Dermatology, 
which  was  specially  charged  with  the  treatment  of  ve- 
nereal disease.  (4)  The  Section  on  Combating  Venereal 
Diseases,  which  elaborated  and  executed  measures  for 
educating  the  soldier  on  this  subject,  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  legal  measures  against  immoral  conditions,  and 
for  venereal  prophylaxis  or  early  treatment.  (5)  The 
Army  Medical  Museum,  which  collected  pathological 
material  and  other  specimens  of  interest  to  medical 
men,  the  scope  of  its  activities  being  greatly  enlarged 
by  the  formation  of  an  organization  for  collecting  ma- 
terial in  the  field. 

The  problems  handled  by  the  Division  of  Lab- 
oratories and  Infectious  Diseases  were  both  varied 
and  vitally  important  in  preventing  wastage  of  troops. 
The  view  held  by  the  experts  of  the  division  that  the 
enteric  group  of  diseases,  which  wrought  such  havoc  in 
other  wars,  could  be  controlled  by  t}phoid  and  para- 
thyphoid inoculation  and  by  adequate  sanitary  mea- 
sures, was  confirmed  by  the  fact  that,  though  t}phoid 
occurred  in  the  devastated  and  extremely  insanitary 
regions  along  the  Western  Front,  it  never  became  a 
serious  menace  to  the  American  Army.     With  the  prac- 


454      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

tical  elimination  of  the  enteric  diseases,  the  respiratory 
diseases  pro\'ided  the  most  important  problem  for  the 
Medical  Department.  The  most  vigorous  measures 
were  pursued  in  studying  and  attempting  to  control 
the  incidence  and  mortality  of  respiratory  diseases, 
and  many  facts  were  ascertained  which  proved  of  great 
value  during  the  period  of  operations  and  which, 
when  the  lessons  to  be  drawn  from  them  have  received 
sufficient  study,  will  eventually  place  in  our  hands  more 
adequate  means  of  control.  Epidemic  cerebrospinal 
meningitis  is  another  disease  which  always  has  to  be 
feared  when  troops  are  mobilized.  Infection  is  trans- 
mitted by  the  discharges  from  the  respiratory  passages, 
usually  being  disseminated  by  "carriers,"  who  spread 
the  disease  without  having  it  themselves.  In  order  to 
detect  these  "carriers,"  any  one  of  whom  might  unin- 
tentionally create  as  much  havoc  as  an  enemy  agent  in 
a  munitions  plant,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  were 
examined,  our  knowledge  of  the  methods  by  which  the 
disease  is  transmitted  being  thereby  greatly  increased. 
The  problem  presented  by  the  venereal  diseases  has 
always  been  of  vital  interest  to  all  armies  and  the  fight 
against  this  class  of  infections  has  been  vigorously  waged 
in  the  American  Army  for  many  years.  With  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Draft  Act  it  became  evident  that  it  would  be 
necessary  to  extend  the  fight  to  the  civilian  population 
not  only  because  it  was  a  source  of  infection  of  the  army 
but  in  order  to  diminish  the  occurrence  of  these  diseases 
among  drafted  men.  To  accomplish  this  a  close  al- 
liance was  formed  between  the  Section  on  Combating 
Venereal  Diseases  of  the  Medical  Department  and  the 


FIELD  IIOSI'ITAL. 

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AN    l.NI  KCI'lor--   WARD 


CLEAR,  FILTERED,  DISLXFECTED  WATER. 
Complete  water-purification  plant  and  laboratory  on  truck,  known  as  the  "steri-lab. 


WATER  STATION  ON  THE  WESTERN  FRONT. 
The  hose  of  a  "steri-lab"  can  be  seen  in  the  foreground. 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  455 

War  Department's  Commission  on  Training  Camp  Ac- 
tivities. The  methods  pursued  in  preventing  venereal 
diseases  aimed,  first,  at  diminishing  exposure  to  infec- 
tion, and,  second,  at  giving  medical  treatment  to  sol- 
diers who  have  been  exposed  in  order  to  prevent  the  de- 
velopment of  the  disease.  One  of  the  most  immediately 
effective  measures  in  preventing  ex-posure  was  the  re- 
pression of  prostitution  and  its  ally,  the  liquor  traffic,  in 
the  neighborhood  of  army  camps  and  to  a  lesser  degree 
throughout  the  country.  The  surgeon-general  assigned 
specially  qualified  officers  of  the  Sanitary  Corps,  mostly 
lawyers,  to  the  Law  Enforcement  Division  of  the 
Commission  on  Training  Camp  Activities,  with  orders 
to  see  that  the  federal  and  local  laws  against  prostitu- 
tion and  liquor-selling  were  rigidly  enforced.  The  re- 
sults exceeded  all  expectations.  In  a  year  and  a  half 
about  130  red-light  districts  were  closed  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  these  officers  working  in  the  name  of  the  Law 
Enforcement  Division.  Street-walking  and  the  con- 
nivance of  lodging-house  and  hotel-keepers,  taxicab 
drivers,  and  others  was  kept  down.  Trained  women 
social  workers,  experts  in  the  management  of  reforma- 
tories and  detention  houses,  and  civilian  investigators 
co-operated  with  the  military  authorities  in  the  work. 
Seven  hundred  and  fifty  cities  and  towns  were  investi- 
gated and  a  thorough  clean-up  was  made  in  453. 
As  a  result  of  this  work,  it  is  estimated  that  to-day  not 
more  than  five  openly  recognized  red-light  districts  remain 
in  the  whole  United  States.  It  has  repeatedly  been  as- 
serted that  militar}^  life  is  conducive  to  immorality  and 
that   the   army   reeks   with   venereal   diseases.     This 


456      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

charge  is  effectually  disposed  of  by  the  statement  that 
of  a  total  of  approximately  225,000  cases  of  venereal 
disease  fomid  to  exist  in  the  army,  200,000  were  con- 
tracted before  enhstment. 

The  Division  of  Surgery  is  subdivided  into  sec- 
tions of  General  Surgery,  Orthopedic  Surgery,  Head 
Surgery,  and  Genito-Urinary  Surgery.  In  each  of  the 
forty-five  army  hospitals  in  the  United  States  a  surgical 
service  is  maintained,  the  chief  surgeon  and  his  assis- 
tants having  practically  the  same  freedom  of  judgment 
in  deciding  upon  the  kind  of  treatment  that  is  to  be 
pursued  that  they  would  exercise  in  civilian  institutions. 
To  some  extent,  however,  the  matter  of  treatment  is 
governed  by  the  rules  laid  down  in  the  Army  Medical 
Manual  and  the  regulations  established  by  the  Surgeon- 
General's  Office.  Thus,  each  month  a  duplicate  of  the 
record  of  every  operation  performed,  a  list  of  the  pa- 
tients who  have  died  and  the  reasons  for  their  deaths, 
and  a  list  of  the  supplies  used  by  the  surgical  service 
must  be  sent  to  Washington.  In  addition,  the  hospital 
must  report  upon  the  number  of  patients  received  from 
overseas  and  the  character  of  their  injuries,  and  the 
number  of  cases  of  peripheral  nerve,  empyema,  frac- 
tures, osteomyelitis,  etc.,  which  are  in  the  hospital, 
together  with  the  classification  of  the  stage  of  the  dis- 
ease, that  is,  whether  it  is  improving,  whether  it  is  sta- 
tionary, or  whether  it  will  require  operation.  In  this 
way  the  Division  of  Surgery  is  enabled  to  maintain  a 
supervision  over  the  operation  of  each  hospital  with- 
out interfering  with  its  actual  workings.  In  other 
words,  the  surgical  service  is  permitted  to  exercise  its 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  457 

own  judgment  untrammelled  and  without  interference, 
but  it  must  render  a  faithful  report  of  all  its  doings. 
These  monthly  returns  are  carefully  scrutinized  in 
Washington  and  the  work  of  the  entire  surgical  per- 
sonnel is  carefully  watched  and  card-catalogued. 
Monthly  reports  from  the  various  commanding  officers 
and  from  consultants,  as  well  as  information  picked  up 
here  and  there,  are  entered  on  these  cards,  so  that  no 
officer  can  remain  for  any  length  of  time  in  the  surgical 
service  without  the  department  knowing  exactly  what 
he  is  doing  and  having  a  very  accurate  estimate  of  his 
ability. 

When  war  was  declared,  the  army  possessed  in  the 
United  States  two  hospitals  for  general  cases,  one  for 
tuberculosis,  one  for  rheumatism,  and  113  post  hospi- 
tals, with  a  total  capacity  of  6,665  beds.  In  order  to 
meet  the  anticipated  needs  of  our  great  new  armies  a 
vast  programme  of  hospital  construction  was  started 
in  August,  191 7,  and,  though  it  was  greatly  curtailed 
after  the  sudden  collapse  of  the  German  war-machine, 
by  March,  1919,  the  Medical  Department  had  at  its 
disposal  in  the  United  States  alone  a  total  of  130,564 
beds.  In  other  words,  the  capacity  of  our  army  hos- 
pitals was  increased  1,850  per  cent  in  twenty  months — 
a  record  which  is,  I  imagine,  without  parallel  in  the 
history  of  medicine.  The  total  number  of  medical 
officers,  nurses,  and  enhsted  men  on  duty  in  these 
hospitals  during  the  period  of  the  war  was  equal  to  the 
population  of  Albany,  New  York,  and  the  number  of 
cases  which  were  treated — 2,000,000  in  all — was  equiv- 
alent   to    the    total    population    of    Chicago.     These 


458      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

gigantic  hospitals,  with  their  cool,  clean  wards,  their 
ridge  ventilation,  their  wide  corridors,  their  elaborate 
heating,  lighting,  water,  and  fire-fighting  systems,  are 
not  surpassed  by  any  civil  hospitals  of  their  size  in  the 
world.  To  realize  this,  one  has  only  to  visit  them. 
Indeed,  it  is  not  the  slightest  exaggeration  to  say  that 
the  American  soldier  received  the  most  expensive  kind 
of  medical  treatment,  in  hospitals  of  the  finest  type, 
at  the  hands  of  physicians  and  surgeons  many  of  whom 
had  given  up  princely  incomes  and  leisurely  lives  in 
order  to  work  eighteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four  at 
a  captain's  or  major's  pay. 

It  did  not  take  the  Medical  Department  many 
months  to  realize  that  it  not  only  had  on  its  hands 
thousands  of  sick  and  wounded  soldiers  but  it  also  had 
the  great  American  public — and  the  pubHc  required  the 
most  careful  and  tactful  handling.  Before  we  had  been 
at  war  a  year  every  conceivable  sort  of  rumor  in  regard 
to  the  way  in  which  the  men  in  the  hospitals  were  being 
treated  was  making  the  rounds.  It  was  whispered 
that  they  did  not  get  enough  to  eat,  that  they  were 
not  properly  clad,  that  the  physicians  played  poker  and 
the  nurses  danced  while  their  patients  lay  dying,  that 
out-of-date  methods  of  treatment  were  the  rule,  that 
the  medical  officers  were  incapable  or  overbearing. 
No  rumor  seemed  too  fantastic  to  receive  credence. 
One  woman  alighted  from  her  limousine  at  the  en- 
trance to  the  Walter  Reed  Hospital  in  Washington  and 
asked  to  be  shown  the  "basket  cases."  Upon  being 
asked  by  the  puzzled  attendants  what  she  meant,  she 
explained  that  she  wished  to  see  the  soldiers  who  had 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  459 

lost  both  legs  and  arms,  and  who,  she  understood,  were 
kept  in  baskets !  And  she  was  quite  frankly  sceptical 
when  assured  that  neither  at  Walter  Reed  nor  at  any 
other  military  hospital  in  the  United  States  was  there 
a  soldier  who  had  lost  both  of  his  legs  and  both  of  his 
arms.  In  order  to  combat  such  ridiculous  and  harmful 
stories,  to  keep  the  public  informed  of  the  splendid 
treatment  which  the  soldiers  were  receiving,  and  to 
cheer  up  the  depressed  and  lonely  soldiers  themselves, 
the  Publicity  Section  of  the  Surgeon- General's  Office 
established  a  series  of  hospital  papers  which  covered 
the  entire  country.  The  Come-Back,  edited  and 
published  at  the  Walter  Reed  Hospital,  Washington, 
D.  C,  jumped  in  one  issue  to  the  ranks  of  the  big  dailies 
and  steadily  held  its  place  in  everything — news,  edi- 
torials, cartoons,  advertising,  and  circulation — that 
makes  a  successful  newspaper.  The  Right  About, 
published  by  the  patients  of  Debarkation  Hospital 
No.  3,  located  in  the  former  Greenhut  store  in  New  York 
City,  soon  ran  up  a  circulation  of  more  than  50,000 — • 
at  five  cents  a  copy,  too.  Among  the  other  papers  was 
The  Trouble  Buster,  pubHshed  at  Fort  McHenry 
Hospital,  Baltimore;  The  Ward  Healer,  at  General 
Hospital  No.  12,  Biltmore,  North  CaroHna;  The  Pill 
Box,  at  Debarkation  Hospital  No.  i,  Ellis  Island; 
The  Reclaimer,  General  Hospital  No.  34,  East  Nor- 
folk, Massachusetts;  The  Stimulant,  General  Hos- 
pital No.  19,  Lakewood,  New  Jersey,  and  a  score  or 
more  of  others  with  equally  amusing  names.  The 
joyous,  humorous,  American  spirit  of  these  papers  set 
a  fashion  of  good  cheer  and  sportsmanship  among  the 


46o      THE  ARMY  BEHIND   THE  ARMY 

patients,  their  attitude  being  characterized  by  the  slo- 
gan shouted  from  the  top  of  the  first  page  of  one  of 
them:  "The  Come-Back  chirps  so  loud  that  nobody 
has  the  nerve  to  growl." 

Even  before  the  first  of  the  constantly  growing 
streams  of  wounded  began  to  trickle  home  from  France, 
it  was  recognized  by  the  Medical  Department  that  a 
system  must  be  devised  and  put  into  operation  whereby 
these  men,  instead  of  being  mended  and  turned  loose  to 
shift  for  themselves  as  best  they  could,  must  be  carried 
along,  receiving  treatment  and  pay,  until  they  had  at- 
tained the  maximum  degree  of  physical  and  functional 
restoration.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the  close 
of  the  Civil  War  the  streets  of  American  cities  were 
filled  with  disabled  men  who  eked  out  their  scanty  pen- 
sions by  selling  shoe-laces,  pencils,  novelties,  or  by  beg- 
ging, because  no  intelligent  measures  had  been  taken  to 
refit  them  for  their  former  occupations  or  to  fit  them 
for  new  ones.  It  was  determined  that  this  condition 
must  not  occur  again.  The  plan  for  physical  recon- 
struction of  the  soldiers,  as  ultimately  adopted,  was 
simple,  direct,  and  effective.  It  involved  primarily 
the  establishment  of  an  administrative  organization 
known  as  the  Division  of  Physical  Reconstruction,  di- 
vided into  departments  of  physiotherapy  and  educa- 
tion. Certain  subdepartments  were  also  made  neces- 
sary by  the  special  requirements  of  those  soldiers  who 
had  lost  their  speech,  their  hearing,  or  their  sight. 
The  sympathy  and  interest  aroused  by  this  work 
throughout  the  country  quickly  drew  into  it  as  officers 
or  advisers  many  men  eminent  in  those  walks  of  life 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  461 

which  best  fitted  them  for  the  exacting  duties  demanded 
by  this  service.  The  work  of  physical  reconstruction 
has  been  eminently  successful  in  its  effect  upon  the  dis- 
abled soldier,  bringing  him  to  a  realization  that,  how- 
ever great  and  disheartening  his  impairment,  he  might 
hope  for  usefulness,  happiness,  and  self-support  in  the 
future,  and  in  many  cases  leading  to  the  adoption  of  a 
new  and  better  vocation  and  a  better  standing  in  life. 
I  knew  one  man  who  had  had  both  legs  blown  off  by  a 
shell  at  Chateau-Thierry.  He  w^as  a  young,  fine-look- 
ing, exceptionally  intelligent  fellow,  but,  with  the 
prospect  of  spending  the  rest  of  his  days  in  a  wheel- 
chair staring  him  in  the  face,  he  had  sunk  to  the  depths 
of  misery-  and  discouragement.  But  one  day  one  of 
the  experts  of  the  reconstruction  service  sat  down  be- 
side his  bed,  offered  him  a  cigarette,  and  started  a 
conversation. 

*'\\Tiat  did  you  do  before  you  went  into  the 
army?"  the  reconstructionist  inquired. 

"I  was  a  carpenter,"  the  man  answered.  "Made 
good  money,  too.  But  I  guess  the  only  thing  I'll  be 
good  for  in  the  future  will  be  peddling  shoe-laces,"  he 
added  bitterly.     "No  one  wants  a  legless  man." 

"Ever  have  any  other  occupation?" 

"No.  I  always  wanted  to  be  an  architect,  but  my 
people  didn't  have  the  money  to  send  me  to  college,  so  I 
went  to  work  after  I  finished  high  school." 

"Would  you  like  to  take  up  architecture  now  if 
you  could  get  the  training?"  the  reconstruction  expert 
asked. 

"Would   I?"   the   soldier    gasped    incredulously. 


462      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

''Would  I?  Say,  friend,  what's  the  use  of  hitting  a 
fellow  when  he's  down  and  out  ?  " 

*' You're  not  down  and  out,"  was  the  cheery  answer. 
"Not  by  a  damned  sight !  If  you  want  to  be  an  archi- 
tect, Uncle  Sam  is  ready  to  give  you  a  chance.  He 
will  give  you  an  education,  and  pay  you  while  you  are 
getting  it,  and  then  he  will  get  you  a  job.  Don't  get 
the  idea  into  your  head  that  he  has  forgotten  what  he 
owes  you  boys  who  have  fought  for  him." 

The  last  time  I  saw  that  soldier  he  had  already 
commenced  his  architectural  education. 

"If  he  keeps  on  as  well  as  he  has  begun,"  one  of  his 
instructors  told  me,  "he  will  make  several  times  as 
much  money  without  any  legs  as  he  did  with  them." 

The  educational  work  starts  at  the  bedside  as  soon 
as  the  patient  feels  the  need  of  some  activity  or  diver- 
sion. Each  patient  is  treated  as  an  individual,  an  edu- 
cational activity  being  selected  for  him  which  will  have 
the  greatest  curative  effect  and  will  at  the  same  time 
present  the  greatest  interest  and  incentive  because  of 
the  future  usefulness  which  it  holds  out  to  him.  Sim- 
ple crafts,  light,  desultory,  and  diverting,  gradually 
give  place  to  more  exacting,  more  purposeful  studies 
and  occupations.  For  one  man  the  series  may  be  bead- 
work,  mechanical  drafting,  wood-shop,  carpentry;  for 
another,  knitting,  basketry,  penmanship,  and  account- 
ing; for  the  illiterate  it  may  be  some  textile  project 
followed  by  instruction  in  reading  and  writing.  Since 
the  work  began,  75,000  men  have  been  enrolled  in  some 
form  of  educational  work  in  fifty  hospitals.  Many  have 
regained  control  of  palsied  muscles,  limbered  up  stiff- 


MEXDERS   OF  MEN  463 

ened  joints,  revived  dulled  mental  sensibilities,  steadied 
shaken  nerves,  or  obtained  improved  physical  tone  by 
the  application  of  these  methods.  To  thousands  the 
educational  service  has  brought  the  discovery  that,  in 
spite  of  the  handicap  of  their  disabilities,  they  possess 
unsuspected  ability  in  certain  lines  of  useful  and  profit- 
able endeavor,  thus  substituting  hope  for  despair  and 
showing  them  the  way  to  a  useful  and  contented  future. 

M was  illiterate ;  in  fact,  he  could  not  sign  the 

pay-roll  or  read  the  simplest  orders;  he  was  bedridden 
with  wounds  in  his  shoulder  and  arm.  He  came  from 
a  remote  mountain  community,  where  the  need  of  even 
a  rudimentary  knowledge  of  the  three  R's  was  not 
deemed  necessary.  For  thirty  minutes  a  day  for  six 
weeks  he  studied  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic. 
When  he  was  ready  for  discharge  from  hospital  he  was 
able  to  write  short  letters,  though  he  found  spelling 
puzzling.  In  reading  he  made  unusual  progress,  though 
his  oral  inflection  left  something  to  be  desired.  His 
greatest  pleasure  was  to  receive  a  letter  from  his 
brother,  who  had  had  five  years'  schoohng  but  could 

not  write  as  well  as  M himself,  or  to  write  to  his 

mother  instead  of  being  compelled  to  ask  the  other 
boys  to  write  his  letters  for  him. 

Many  of  the  soldiers  are  countr}'  boys  and  will 
go  back  to  farming  when  they  leave  the  hospital.  For 
them  there  are  courses  in  farm  accounting  and  work  in 
the  gas-engine  shop  and  with  the  hospital's  tractor. 
Clerks  who  were  unable  to  obtain  promotion  because 
they  did  not  understand  stenography  and  t}-pewriting 
are  learning  those  branches,  and  some  are  taking  courses 


464      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

in  the  newest  systems  of  cataloguing  and  bookkeeping. 
A  boy  who  had  lost  both  legs  above  the  knee  be- 
came proficient  in  Spanish  in  order  that  he  might  assist 
his  brother  in  the  management  of  a  ranch  near  the 
Mexican  border.  Others  are  taught  woodworking, 
gardening,  the  operation  and  repair  of  gas-engines, 
shoe  repairing,  oxyacetylene  welding,  printing,  elec- 
trical mechanics,  lettering,  and  drawing.  One  day 
there  was  brought  into  the  reconstruction  hospital  at 
Colonia,  New  Jersey,  a  boy  whose  hands  had  been 
taken  off  at  the  wrists.  For  five  weeks  he  had  been 
fed  and  cared  for  by  any  one  who  happened  to  be  near. 
He  was  helpless  and  despondent.  The  able  and  ener- 
getic woman  in  charge  of  the  educational  work  in  his 
ward  suggested  that  if  a  spoon  was  fastened  to  the 
stump  of  his  right  arm  he  would  be  able  to  feed  himself. 
At  first  he  said  that  he  couldn't,  but  she  insisted  on 
his  making  the  attempt.  The  very  next  day  he  called 
to  the  sergeant  who  had  told  him  that  dinner  was 
ready:  "I  can  wait  on  myself  now."  Then  he  devised 
a  way  to  light  his  own  cigarettes.  Before  long  they  had 
rigged  up  a  device  by  which  brushes  could  be  fastened 
to  his  arms  and  he  was  set  to  work  painting  toys  and 
boxes.  And  he  did  it  remarkably  well,  everything 
considered.  And,  what  was  much  more  important,  he 
whistled  as  he  worked. 

I  doubt  if  any  branch  of  the  army  did  more  efficient 
work  in  its  respective  fine,  and  received  less  credit  from 
the  public,  than  the  Veterinary  Corps.  This  lack  of 
appreciation  was  due,  in  the  first  place,  to  public  igno- 
rance of  the  duties  of  the  corps  and  of  the  character  of 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  465 

its  personnel.  Most  people  associate  a  veterinarian 
with  the  old-time  country  horse-doctor,  of  rough  man- 
ners and  still  rougher  speech,  who  was  known  to  ever>' 
man  and  boy  in  the  countryside  as  "Doc."  The  army 
veterinarian  is  a  different  genus  altogether.  He  is  usu- 
ally as  smart  in  appearance  and  as  well-set-up  as  any 
officer  of  the  line;  he  is  more  often  than  not  a  university 
graduate,  and  his  methods  of  treatment  are  as  modern 
and  scientific  as  those  of  a  surgeon  or  a  medical  special- 
ist. The  impression  also  seems  to  prevail  that,  as  a 
result  of  the  wholesale  motorization  of  artillery  and 
transport  and  the  enormous  use  of  aircraft,  animals 
played  but  a  small  part  in  the  Great  War,  and  that 
consequently  the  army  veterinarian  enjoyed  something 
akin  to  a  sinecure.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  nothing  could 
be  further  from  the  truth.  Probably  you  were  not 
aware  that  when  the  war  ended,  the  United  States  Army 
possessed  close  to  half  a  million  horses  and  mules — 
the  exact  figure  was,  I  beheve,  about  470,000 — and  was 
purchasing  hundreds  of  more  daily.  Not  only  was  the 
task  of  inspecting  and  supervising  the  care  of  this  great 
body  of  animals  an  enormous  one,  but,  as  a  result  of 
the  extreme  scarcity  of  horse-flesh — for  buyers  for  the 
European  armies  had  almost  drained  the  markets  of 
the  world  before  we  entered  the  war — and  because  of 
the  lack  of  tonnage,  the  animals  of  the  A.  E.  F.  were,  as 
a  divisional  commander  expressed  it  in  a  general  order, 
''worth  their  weight  in  gold." 

Prior  to  1916  there  were  only  about  75  veterina- 
rians in  the  entire  army,  but  with  the  passage  during 
that  year  of  the  National  Defense  Act  the  number  of 


466      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

veterinarians  at  the  call  of  the  government  was  ma- 
terially increased  by  the  creation  of  the  Veterinary 
Reserve  Corps.  The  Veterinary  Corps,  like  other 
branches  of  the  service,  kept  pace  with  the  expansion  of 
the  army,  and  when  the  Armistice  was  signed  it  had 
on  duty  2,200  officers  and  an  enlisted  force  of  more  than 
21,000  men. 

When  an  animal  is  first  led  before  a  purchasmg 
commission  its  relation  to  the  Veterinary  Corps  begins. 
Ever>^  horse  and  mule  must  be  examined  by  a  veter- 
inary officer  for  soundness  and  freedom  from  physical 
defects  before  it  can  be  purchased.  As  soon  as  the 
purchased  animals  have  arrived  at  the  various  remount 
depots  they  become  the  objects  of  unceasing  attention 
by  the  Veterinary  Corps,  whose  duty  it  is  to  keep  them 
free  from  disease  and  in  the  highest  state  of  efficiency. 
This  work  includes  the  sanitary  inspection  of  stables, 
picket-lines,  forage  and  bedding,  methods  of  feeding, 
watering,  grooming,  and  shoeing,  the  detection  and  seg- 
regation of  communicable  diseases  and  the  establish- 
ment of  proper  quarantine  regulations,  the  care  and 
treatment  of  all  sick  animals,  the  operation  of  veteri- 
nary hospitals,  the  investigation  of  the  cause  and  cure 
of  equine  diseases,  and  the  keeping  of  records.  An- 
other important  duty  of  the  corps  in  France  was  the 
prompt  evacuation  of  all  wounded  animals  in  order 
that  they  might  not  hinder  the  mobility  of  the  troops 
or  engage  the  attention  of  the  men.  In  order  to  facili- 
tate the  evacuation  of  sick  and  wounded  animals  from 
the  Zone  of  the  Advance,  21  veterinary  hospital  or- 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  467 

ganizations — each  consisting  of  7  officers  and  300  men, 
and  each  having  a  capacity  of  i  ,000  sick  animals — were 
trained,  organized,  and  sent  overseas.  There  were 
also  sent  to  France  2  base  veterinary  hospitals  with  a 
capacity  of  500  animals  each.  Besides  this,  every  can- 
tonment in  the  United  States  had  its  own  veterinary 
hospital,  varying  in  capacity  from  200  to  600  animals 
each.  As  a  result  of  the  scientific  methods  of  sanita- 
tion and  treatment  introduced  by  the  Veterinary  Corps, 
the  mortality  among  animals  was  enormously  reduced 
(in  the  early  days  of  the  war  the  British  estimated  that 
the  average  life  of  a  horse  in  France  was  only  sixteen 
days),  thousands  of  disabled  horses  which  in  former 
wars  would  have  been  shot  were  evacuated,  mended, 
and  sent  back  to  the  front  for  further  service,  and  mil- 
lions of  dollars  were  saved  to  the  American  taxpayer. 

Even  more  important  than  its  care  of  the  animals 
of  the  army  was  the  work  of  the  Veterinary  Corps  in 
protecting  the  men  by  guarding  the  purity  of  their 
meat  and  dairy  supplies.  The  activities  of  the  Meat 
and  Dairy  Inspection  Service  include  the  inspection  of 
meats  purchased  for  the  use  of  the  army  at  the  time 
of  their  receipt,  while  in  storage,  and  upon  issue  to 
troops;  inspection  of  storehouses,  refrigerators,  and 
methods  of  operation  in  handling  food  therein;  inspec- 
tion of  slaughter-houses,  butcher-shops,  and  packing- 
houses; ante-mortem  and  post-mortem  inspection  for 
soundness  and  suitability  for  human  food  of  animals 
slaughtered;  inspection  of  cows  and  dairies  providing 
milk,  butter,  and  cheese  for  the  use  of  the  troops. 


468      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

Some  conception  of  the  extent  and  importance  of  the 
work  of  the  Meat  Inspection  Service  can  be  had  by  re- 
membering that  when  the  war  ended,  the  Packing- 
House  Products  Branch  of  the  Office  of  the  Director  of 
Purchase  and  Storage  was  purchasing  for  the  use  of 
the  army  an  average  of  from  15,000,000  to  19,000,000 
pounds  of  meat  products  weekly.  And  every  carcass, 
if  not  every  pound,  had  to  be  inspected  and  passed  by 
the  Veterinary  Corps  before  it  reached  the  mess-tables 
of  the  army.  That,  in  spite  of  the  incredible  quantities 
of  meat  products  which  had  to  be  purchased  for  the  use 
of  our  forces  in  the  field,  and  the  great  distances  be- 
tween the  abattoirs  and  the  zone  of  operations,  there 
was  no  repetition  of  the  "  embalmed-beef "  scandal 
which  sullied  the  history  of  the  war  with  Spain  was  due 
to  the  efficiency  and  unremitting  vigilance  of  the  men 
who  wore  on  their  collars  the  insignia  of  the  Veterinary 
Corps. 

I  am  perfectly  aware  that  the  medical  officers  who 
do  me  the  honor  to  read  this  chapter  will  criticise  me 
for  the  omissions  I  have  made.  And  such  criticism  is 
justified.  I  have  dismissed  such  important  phases  of 
the  work  of  the  Medical  Corps  as  the  Division  of 
Surgery  with  a  few  paragraphs;  to  the  Dental  Corps 
and  the  Nurse  Corps  I  have  been  able  to  devote  but  a 
few  lines;  the  Sanitary  Corps,  the  Ambulance  Service, 
and  a  score  of  other  branches  I  have  merely  mentioned. 
Of  the  marvellous  work  performed  by  our  medical  offi- 
cers in  plastic  surgery,  in  bone  grafting,  in  the  disinfec- 


MENDERS  OF  MEN  469 

tion  of  wounds,  in  orthopedics,  in  the  treatment  of 
the  blind,  the  shell-shocked,  and  the  insane,  I  have 
written  nothing — the  subject  is  too  great,  the  space  at 
my  disposal  too  limited  to  even  attempt  it.  The  most 
that  I  can  hope  to  do  in  the  limits  of  a  single  chapter 
is  to  give  my  readers  the  same  fleeting,  cursory  view  of 
the  achievements  of  the  Medical  Department  that  one 
obtains  of  a  countryside  from  an  airplane. 

If  America's  losses  in  the  greatest  of  wars  were 
relatively  slight — and  they  were  slight  when  compared 
with  the  appalling  casualties  suffered  by  most  of  the 
other  warring  nations — the  reason  is  not  to  be  found  in 
the  superiority  of  American  strategy,  in  the  ability  of 
American  commanders,  or  in  the  excellence  of  Ameri- 
can weapons,  but  in  the  efficiency,  self-sacrifice,  and 
devotion  of  the  officers,  nurses,  and  men  who  wore  the 
caduceus  of  the  Army  Medical  Department.  And  I 
know  whereof  I  speak,  for  I  have  not  only  visited 
French,  British,  Belgian,  Italian,  even  German,  hos- 
pitals all  the  way  from  La  Panne  to  Montfalcone,  thus 
affording  me  standards  of  comparison,  but  I  spent 
nearly  three  months  in  an  American  hospital  on  the 
Marne,  I  came  home  on  an  American  hospital-ship,  and 
for  nearly  three  months  more  I  was  under  the  care  of 
army  medical  officers  in  the  United  States.  In  dress- 
ing-stations, field,  camp,  base,  debarkation,  and  general 
hospitals  I  have  watched  the  Medical  Department  at 
its  work,  and  the  first-hand  knowledge  thus  gained 
gives  me  the  right  to  assert  that  it  was  the  most  efficient 


470      THE  ARMY  BEHIND  THE  ARMY 

service  of  its  kind  possessed  by  any  army.  To  its 
officers  and  men,  and  to  the  devoted  women  of  the  Army 
Nurse  Corps,  I  Hft  my  hat  in  gratitude  and  admiration. 
The  American  Army  and  the  American  people  owe  them 
a  debt  which  they  can  never  fully  pay. 


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3   1 


58  01095  4088 


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